The Highs and the LowsSample

Jesus (The Lows)

Fully God and fully man. It’s a phrase we often hear at church, but what does it really mean? When looking at Christian living, there’s only one perfect example. All the individuals mentioned this week were flawed and sinned. Only one person in the Bible lived, ate, laughed, and cried but did not sin. That person is Jesus!

When the Jewish people pictured their Messiah, they likely would have thought of images of dominance, strength, and someone who would overthrow the Romans. So seeing Jesus, the son of a carpenter, born in a stable and from the town of Nazareth - to which one of his own disciples joked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth” - would have surprised them, to say the least. On top of all this, they wouldn’t have expected their Warrior Messiah to cry. But Jesus did just that.

John 11:35, the verse famed for its length, “Jesus wept,” tells us just that.

At that moment, Jesus was crying for his friend Lazarus who had passed. He knew that he would raise Lazarus from the dead some days later but was pained at the grief that his friends Martha and Mary must’ve been experiencing. Jesus was informed that his friend was going to die but did not arrive immediately when called upon. Mary and Martha (Lazarus’ sisters) were distraught. They had trusted Jesus, and from their perspective, he had not just abandoned them but also their brother - his friend.

For many of us, when we go through periods of hardship, we often find ourselves feeling abandoned and as though our prayers aren’t being heard. However, it's the total opposite. God hears our prayers and sees our despair, but, like Mary and Martha, we expect God to work in our timing.

Jesus mourned with those who mourned. That isn’t the only time Jesus is recorded to have cried. In Luke, we read that Jesus wept for the fate of the city of Jerusalem - the holy city of his people. When God sees injustice and sin, it breaks his heart, and the pain he feels is out of love. It’s the same love that led him to give his Son to save us from sin, and that Son felt pain for the world, and at the hands of that same world, he felt brutal physical pain.

Questions

Q: In times of pain, have you ever questioned where God is? While reading today's passages, remember God’s love in his own pain.

Q: Is anyone close to you struggling with emotional pain? This week, think of ways to be a good friend to them.

Prayer:

Jesus, I pray that I will learn to be in touch with my emotions healthily. That I would be ready to come to you in times of trouble, and I would know that your heart breaks when my heart breaks. I pray that I’d also be a person who would draw near to the brokenhearted and feel deep compassion for those in pain,

Amen