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Storms of Every Shape and Color

Storms are unavoidable. Storms don’t care about your race or your economic situation. They don’t care if you are broke, in debt, or have millions in the bank. They don’t care if you have a great marriage and family, are divorced and a single parent, can’t have kids, or can’t seem to keep a girlfriend or boyfriend. It could be an emotional, relational, physical, or financial storm—it doesn’t matter, they just come. Life sometimes gives you less, but only you determine your response. 

Jesus traveled to meet Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha, shortly after Lazarus had died. He could have arrived before Lazarus died, but He chose to wait. He knew that He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead when He got there. Then He came to Mary and those with her who wept. Jesus didn’t offer any conciliatory words to them, nor did He say they were overreacting because He knew He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead in just a few minutes. He didn’t try to explain to them that if they had just intervened sooner or done something differently—prayed a certain prayer, had more faith, lived differently in some way—then Lazarus would still be alive. Instead, we are told in the shortest—and in many ways the most powerful—verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept.” 

In that moment, in that darkest point before the dawn, the important thing was not an explanation, but an assurance that Jesus was there with Mary. He felt her pain. He cared. He empathized. He was as willing as God in all His glory—and as a man in all his humanness—to kneel down with her in her most painful moment and weep with her. 

Jesus didn’t cause these events. He wasn’t manipulating circumstances to teach anyone a lesson. Storms hit, life happens—but Jesus is still there, empathizing with us, refusing to give up on us, and providing grace to help us find a victory even in what looks to be the worst of defeats.