On This Day: To Glory in Seeing Jesus’ Glory

   The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:22-24)

   I was in grade 8 when my dad came home from work with a box of ice skates for all us kids. I quickly fell in love with skating (after the embarrassment of knocking some cute girls over while learning to skate!). The next year I joined hockey and was hooked.

   At the same time (coincidentally) my uncle had opened a sports’ shop with a special focus on hockey. I was able to take my full $114.00 from strawberry picking and buy all my hockey equipment, skates included! I never did learn what kind of “family deal” my dad got, or whether he paid anything extra behind the scenes. All I knew is that hockey was now my favorite activity.

   As a promotional opportunity for his store, my uncle bought 4 season tickets to Vancouver Canucks’ games, and I had a couple of opportunities to attend games in the early 70’s while the Canucks were in their infancy. I know what it felt like to be absolutely fascinated with the on-ice play, the feeling of glory whenever the Canucks put the puck in the net, and particularly when they won a game.

   All that to say that Jesus talking about glory is not a foreign concept. People have no problem feeling glory, expressing glory, delighting in the glory of their favorite people or teams. The ONLY problem they have with glory is attaching to Jesus’ glory even though he is our Creator, and the only Savior of the world.

   What gripped my heart this morning is that Jesus had a “desire”. It isn’t that this brings him down to my level, since desires have been the wreck of me on one side, and a driving force on the other. So, to think of Jesus having pure desire, holy desire, righteous desire, good desire, is fascinating.

   QUESTION: Do I have a right to put myself in the picture? When Jesus expresses to the Father his desire “that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am,” do I really have the right to include myself in this?

   ANSWER: Absolutely! We are still in the paragraph Jesus introduced with, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word”. I am one of the people who have come to believe in Jesus through “their word”. Their word is the New Testament. The four gospel accounts. The history of the book of Acts. The instructional leadership of the letters to the churches. The apostles’ writings have been guiding and directing me for six decades.

   This means that Jesus’ “desire” is for me “also”. I have been given to Jesus by the Father. And Jesus’ desire, even before going to the cross, was that I would be included in that great numberless multitude that will be with him in glory glorying in his glory!

   Over my decades, I have watched so many people either fall away from the church, or slink back to the safety of institutional religion, because they believe they were failed by other “Christians”. 

   At the same time, even as I have been failed by so many church-folk (including the first pastor I worked under who got so angry at me for asking questions that he wouldn’t talk to me and was later caught in adultery!), it has all fallen into the “for those who love God all things work together for good” reality that brings me to today’s viewpoint of Jesus wanting me to be with him enjoying the overflowing joy of his glory.

   My primary reason for sharing this is to encourage anyone who has been hurt by the church, discouraged by people who don’t want to be with you, heartbroken by sinful actions from people you thought were loved ones, however any of us would describe anything that entices us to stop following Jesus, to keep before you what Jesus himself said:

   “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”

   How do we know if we are one of the people Jesus’ is speaking of? By examining whether we have responded to the command of the gospel to repent and believe in Jesus. If we have confessed with our mouths that “Jesus is Lord”, and believed in our hearts that God raised him from the dead (meaning all that these things mean in the New Testament), we are saved. We have eternal life. We will be with Jesus forever in the new heavens and the new earth.

   If you are one of those people, “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the GLORY THAT IS TO BE REVEALED TO US” (Romans 8:18). 

   So, instead of turning from Jesus because of hurts or disappointments, turn to Jesus WITH those hurts and disappointments, admit and confess how inglorious they are, and tell Jesus how much it fills your heart with wonder that he “desires” to have you with him in his eternal home to rejoice in the constant glory of his glory.

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: When Deadly Sorrow is Returned to Joy

   “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” (John 16:20-22)

   Do you KNOW Jesus as the Shepherd who returns his sheep to joy? Do you see him as the Savior who saves us out of the horrible cursedness of our sinful state and saves us into his kingdom of “righteousness and peace AND JOY in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17)?

   I ask this because “this is eternal life, that they KNOW YOU, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Every Scripture that promises eternal life to those who believe is calling us to KNOW God by personal experience through our interactions with him in his word, in prayer, and in his Spirit.

   And I ask this because the Scriptures are SATURATED with God’s determination to return his children to joy. We see this constantly throughout the whole Bible, God returning his children to joy after discipline, after defeats, after failures, after exiles, and even after outright violent persecution of his people.

   But we see the bull’s eye of this returning-children-to-joy in the evangel (gospel) itself. Prophecies spoke of the joy to come: “WITH JOY you will draw water from the wells of salvation” (Isaiah 12:3).

   God’s birth announcement to the shepherds was an announcement of joy: “Fear not, for behold, I bring you GOOD NEWS OF GREAT JOY that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11).

   Jesus’ desire for his disciples just before his arrest and crucifixion was for them to experience the fullness of his joy: “These things I have spoken to you, that MY JOY may be in you, and that YOUR JOY may be full” (John 15:11).

   And the description of the effects of salvation in Christ could not be presented without this emphasis on joy: “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and REJOICE WITH JOY THAT IS INEXPRESSIBLE AND FILLED WITH GLORY, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (I Peter 1:8-9).

   The whole message of God is that he returns his children to joy in Jesus Christ our Lord. The evangel is not primarily about an escape from hell but an entrance into eternal life. Eternal life is “to know” the Triune God. The fruit of the Spirit is “Love, JOY, peace”, because that is what God is like, and the kingdom of God is about “righteousness and peace and JOY in the Holy Spirit”.

   This is why Paul would summarize the whole gamut of history with this testimony: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with THE GLORY that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). This is why he would emphasize, “the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is CHRIST IN YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY” (Colossians 1:27).

   In Luke 15, Jesus told 3 parables (the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son) to emphasize how joyful God is that there is rejoicing in heaven every time a sinner repents. Why? Because God feels joy to have us as his own people.

   And when we are his people, he promises this wonderful description of our eternal return to joy in the coming glorification:

   Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory WITH GREAT JOY, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude vss 24-25).

   The only question is, are we coming to God in our joylessness, our griefs and sorrows, our losses and laments, our mistakes and failures, our despondencies and depressions, our guilt, shame and fear, and letting HIM return us to joy instead of us putting on that role-playing façade of joy so we look like “good” Christians?

   Take another look at the way Jesus spoke to his disciples before they were even conscious of the loss of their Messiah and consider how you need him to speak his “truth in love” to your soul to return you to joy in him. And then keep listening and obeying until you KNOW HIM as your shepherd who returns his sheep to joy.

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

 

On This Day: When Friendship Destroys a Church’s Love

   “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another." (John 15:12-17)

   This was quite the eye-opener for me this morning. I had never noticed before that Jesus had just told the apostles that they were his friends, but he never used the word for friend-love to describe the aim of all his teaching. The "love one another" was agapè-love, which means the same kind of love we receive from God.

   This makes sense that, if Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, the love that flows through us to others is the love that flows into us from the Triune God. And this is why Jesus has repeated the “agapè-love one another” command so many times!

   And yes, agapè-love is a “command” (friendship-love is not). So why do churches sacrifice agapè-love for friendship-love, or family-love?

   Part of the answer is that we have not been taught “the gospel OF THE KINGDOM”. People always hear about “the gospel”, and that this is a one-on-one interaction between us and Jesus. But Jesus and the apostles taught “the gospel of the kingdom”, meaning that the good news of salvation is not a solitary experience of Jesus coming to us, but an individual’s experience of coming to Jesus IN his kingdom and becoming one of his brothers in the brotherhood of believers.

   That’s why Jesus taught so many parables about “the kingdom”. It’s why he would tell the religious hypocrites, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes GO INTO the kingdom of God before you” (Matthew 21:31). Everyone understood that Jesus was calling people out of the kingdom of the world and into the kingdom of God.

   This is also why Paul would remind the churches, “He has delivered us FROM the domain of darkness and transferred us TO the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14). When someone is born again, they are born INTO Jesus’ kingdom. When someone “comes” to Jesus, they come to him IN his kingdom. When someone “receives” Christ, they receive him as their King IN his kingdom.

   What Jesus kept telling his disciples (constantly affirming that he would need to be alive for the things he taught them to be experienced) was that agapè-love was the love of his kingdom. You could leave all your friends behind and come into the agapè-love of his kingdom. You could leave your whole family behind and come into the agapè-love of his kingdom. You could have friendships in the kingdom that were under the authority of the agapè-love of his kingdom. You could have family relationships in the kingdom that were under the authority of the agapè-love of his kingdom.

   But you could NOT cover your relationship with Jesus and his kingdom with friendship-love, or family-love, or self-love. When those lesser loves have authority over agapè-love, we end up with the divisions and schisms based on friendship, family, and self-rule that Satan freely promotes amongst church-goers.

   At my six-decades-of-knowing-God stage of life, I have come to cringe when people talk about their friendships but not their agapè-love for Jesus’ church. When I see people act as if the church is about friendship or family, but there is no talk about “the kingdom of his beloved Son”, I know we are in trouble.

   The fact is that we either topple the idols of friendship and family (as Gideon was required to do with his own father’s idolatry), or those idols of friendship and family will topple the agapè-love focus of Jesus and his kingdom. If a friendship has more authority over how we follow Christ than Jesus does, we are not following Christ. If family members have more authority over us than Christ the Lord, then they are the ones we are confessing as Lord.  

   Some of us will know what it is like to lose family and friends in our determination to follow Jesus wherever he leads. We understand that the agapè-love of Jesus still covers how we relate to those people when we see them, but we must keep pursuing the agapè-love of Jesus in his kingdom even if they keep rejecting us for doing so.

   When I look back at all my church experiences in both the institutional and home churches, when people changed from seeking the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace within the church to building private friendships and family alliances behind the scenes, we were already past the point of no return. I have some painful lessons of trying too hard to salvage what people had already rejected.

   Others of us may realize that we are the ones whose devotion to friends and family have kept us from following Christ in his kingdom. As Jesus said to the church of Ephesus when they had “abandoned the love you had at first” (the agapè-love of Jesus’ kingdom), “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (Revelation 2:5).

   Yes, that’s how seriously Jesus takes it when we turn from agapè-love to any other kind of love. We cannot be his church (lampstand) unless we are receiving and expressing his agapè-love.

   When Peter wrote, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (I Peter 4:8), the “loving” and “love” are the agapè-love of his kingdom. Only when Jesus’ command to pursue THAT love is obeyed, can we “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved (agapèd) children. And walk in love (agapè), as Christ loved (agapèd) us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1-2).

   I have heard so many stories of what it is like for someone to come to Christ in Muslim countries. They know that their family and friends will hate them, and maybe even be the ones trying to kill them if they confess Jesus Christ as Lord. But here in North America, if a young person can’t follow Jesus because they are afraid of losing friends or upsetting family, we just change our youth ministries to accommodate them. And then we wonder why they leave the church as adults when we never actually brought them to believe “the gospel of the kingdom”. They didn’t repent and trust in Jesus in the way described in God’s word, so once all the fun of youth group is over, the fun of the world awaits.

   For those who hear Jesus when he says, “These things I command you, so that you will love one another”, walk in “the obedience of faith” and leave the lesser relationships to him. This is part of the “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” characteristic of relationship with God. Friendship and family are optional; agapè-love is not.

   So look in the mirror of truth, admit any ways lesser loves constrict your agapè-love, repent if and how much is needed, and deliberately “pursue righteousness, faith, love (agapè), and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart” (II Timothy 2:22). It’s a command from Jesus.

 

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: Pruned to Bear Fruit in the Beatitudinal Valley

   "I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples." (John 15:5-8)

   There are times when I am feeling negative emotions to the point of despondency, but suddenly I look around and realize where I am: in the Beatitudinal Valley! That always reminds me that it is a blessing when we find ourselves feeling poor in spirit about what we are reading in God’s word.

   As I considered this in relation to a dubious track record in the “bearing much fruit” category, God again blessed me with another Beatitudinal Journey that reminded me who I am, and for whose glory I am alive.

   If "bearing much fruit" requires saving lots of souls, or building up lots of disciples into living for Christ, or helping people spend a lifetime seeking God in his word and prayer, I am obviously a failure.

   If "bearing much fruit" means looking to others like we are filled with "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control" (the fruit of the Spirit) then this would be strike two.

   However, if letting myself meet God in the Beatitudinal Valley so he can bless me with a genuine journey into real fruit bearing is how I will "bear much fruit", then recognizing where I am on the downside of the valley gives me hope that the upside is ahead.

   The Beatitudes are the way Jesus began his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). They are eight statements that begin, “blessed are…”, and then describe the qualities people will find in themselves when God is blessing them. Yes, this is the focus, that Jesus is describing what it looks like to be blessed by God, NOT what we must do to earn God’s blessing.

   So, if any of us feel “poor in spirit” in relation to bearing much fruit, that willingness to admit how poorly we are doing is a blessing from God.

   And if any of us go deeper into “those who mourn” what is wrong with us, it is further evidence that the Father is at work to bless us by grace through faith.

   When we find ourselves going even further into meekly acknowledging that we cannot fix our problem of bearing so little fruit and so we must submit to Jesus Christ who can “transform” us into his image, that meekness is a blessing of God to break our attachment to self-effort and lead us to fully rely on his Son.

   When we submit to Jesus Christ and find ourselves hungering and thirsting for the righteousness of bearing much fruit to the Father’s glory, we are being blessed. This downside of the Beatitudinal Valley brings us to valley bottom where God satisfies our longings by grace through faith in ways no amount of doing good works or trying harder could ever accomplish.

   This results in God blessing us to become his “merciful” children with “pure hearts” in our single-hearted devotion to him. We become the “peacemakers” whose pure hearts want nothing more than to see everyone we meet come to experience peace with God through the good news of Jesus’ kingdom. And we become such an annoyance to the world, the flesh, and the devil who do not want people glorifying God by bearing much fruit, hence their incessant efforts to “persecute” Jesus’ church into oblivion.

   Since I am sharing this on the morning of Easter Sunday (Resurrection Sunday), it is fitting that we would celebrate the new covenant in Jesus’ blood by seeking with all our hearts to bear much fruit in this world to the glory of God the Father, and the glory of Jesus Christ our Lord who has provided so great a salvation.

   And then we go from here to abide in Jesus Christ as branches abide in the vine, and to praise the Father for any ways he deems fit to prune us (knowing that much more is required than pride would ever admit). If we truly hunger and thirst to bear much fruit to the glory of the Triune God, we welcome every pinch of Father’s pruning shears as a gracious and necessary good to make us like his Son.

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: The Children Who Know What Only God Knew

   “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." (John 14:26-26)

   My journey through the Last Supper account in John 13-17 is amazing me with how many ways Jesus told the disciples they would see him again after his death and they couldn’t grasp it because of what they expected the Messiah to do to deliver Israel from the Romans. There are big lessons in that regarding how we often cannot accept what God is teaching us in his word because we are already clinging to something contrary we were taught by our family, church, or Bible college.

   The thing that hit me like an arrow finding the bull’s eye is how Jesus’ teaching about the Holy Spirit presents evidence that we are born again. It focuses on Paul’s elaboration in I Corinthians 2:9-11. The primary focus for the moment is this:

But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,

    nor the heart of man imagined,

what God has prepared for those who love him”—

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. (vss 9-10)

   Paul is writing after the fact of what Jesus was telling his disciples on the night of the Last Supper. As Jesus’ promised, the Holy Spirit had come, he had been teaching the church through the apostles all about salvation and the righteousness of faith, and he was constantly reminding the church of what Jesus had already taught during his earthly ministry.

   Paul quotes from the Tanakh (the Hebrew Scriptures we call the Old Testament) what was being fulfilled in the work of the Holy Spirit. There were things no one had seen because they were hidden in God. There were things no one had heard because God hadn’t yet told anyone. And there were things no one had imagined God to be doing (as shown very clearly with the disciples during the last supper and the few days Jesus was dead) because God’s thoughts and ways are higher than our thoughts and ways.

   Paul makes clear a few verses later that “the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (vs 14). This is why Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to be born again to see and enter the kingdom of God. This is why Jesus said that people had to become like little children in order to see Jesus and hear what he was saying. The point is the same all the way through, that in and of ourselves we are dead in our trespasses and sins and cannot know and do the will of God.

   And that’s when it hit me. Because I do know and do the will of God, and because I do know the things once hidden in God, the only explanation is that I have been born again and taught by God. In fact, what Paul writes in this section is, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given to us by God” (vs 12).

   Today I needed this comfort of knowing that knowing what only God knew is a clear sign of the new birth. I can be transformed by the “renewal of the mind” given to us in regeneration because “we have the mind of Christ” (vs 16). God has been pleased to reveal this to me as a little child so that, even though I could never keep up in a debate about doctrine, I know that I know what once only God knew.

   And now that I know that, I want to make it known to all who will hear Jesus’ voice, that we can still be those who are taught by God and know what only can be known by the word and the Spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: How the Deity of Jesus Simply Adds Up

  When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once." (John 13:31-32)

   Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)

   The deity of Jesus Christ is denied by Muslims, Mormons, and JWs, but clearly taught as fact in God’s word, the Bible.

   For me, this is a mix of revelation (what God tells us in his word about his Son), and relationship (how I have come to know Jesus in the way revealed). Both make it feel utterly crucial that we do not let go of this glorious reality that Jesus is glorified as the Son of God who makes his Father known.

   Part of the deep feelings I have about this comes from the rhyming thoughts of Scripture on the topic. God presents truth in parallel thoughts so that, just as multiple threads are woven together to make a strong cord, the revelation of Jesus as God the Son is so strong that anyone who hangs his/her life from it will never be ashamed.

   The point is to see how all the rhyming thoughts are synonymous in revealing the relationship between the Father and the Son. The Father has his place in the Triunity of God, and the Son has his. And, just like my son and daughter are as much human as I am even though I am the dad and they are my children, Jesus is just as much God as his Father even though the Father is the father and the Son is the son.

   Part of the glory of all these references to Jesus in his relationship with the Father is the pattern they follow. In the center is “of”. On the first side is something about Jesus; on the other side is something of the Father. Every such phrase tells us a different color of the spectrum of the divine light of their relationship.

 

Something about God the Son

Of

Something about God the Father

 

   Here are a variety of these expressions listed together so you can see their unity and harmony in revealing this relationship.

 

Something about God the Son	Of	Something about God the Father	Scripture
The image	of	the invisible God	Col 1:15
The radiance	of	the glory of God	Heb 1:3
The exact imprint	of	his nature	Heb 1:3
The form	of	God	Phil 2:6
The Son	of	God	Too many!

 

   We can add to this that Jesus is “the Word” of God, even though the exact phrase is not found in Scripture. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2). Jesus was with God, he was God, and as “the Word” he is the ultimate revelation of God.

   One of the beautiful pictures of what it will be like in the new heavens and the new earth is “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23). What a beautiful summary of everything the rest of Scripture teaches, that Jesus is the lamp who makes the Father’s light known to the world. He had that “form of God” in the beginning, “the Word became flesh” in time, and we will see the glory of the Father in the Son for eternity.

   This is why it is such “good news of great joy” that “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II Corinthians 4:6). Let yourself picture that. It is ours already. By faith, we see in the face of Jesus Christ the glory of God. Jesus came to make this known to us!

    So, when Jesus is just hours away from his crucifixion, and he tells us, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him” (John 13:31), it is to prepare us for what we would see of the world’s hatred of our Savior. Death and the grave would have no victory over Jesus even though he would humble himself to experience both.

   But because of his resurrection, we believe that Jesus will appear in glory soon enough no matter how long it seems to take for his return. For “we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (I John 3:2).

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: When the ‘If Onlys’ Meet the Good Shepherd

   Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. (John 11:17-21)

   Four years ago, we lost our four granddaughters to what my wife and I came to call “relational suicide”. She had been helping a hospice client through the loss of a loved one by suicide, and we suddenly realized that we were going through the same thing!

   There’s never a day goes by that I do not have some kind of “if only” thought about how things could have been handled differently. To know they were convinced to make such a decision haunts us. To know they are still alive to come home but won’t mocks us. It’s our story. It’s of the “nothing new under the sun” category. I get it.

   But that’s my stage. I am not in Bethany with the grieving sisters. I am not at Lazarus’s tomb with Jesus showing up. I’m not feeling what Martha felt to have come to know Jesus Christ in person as “Lord” and have to accept that he wasn’t there when I needed him most. I can easily relate to it all, but it’s not my stage!

   My stage is mine. Your stage is yours. We can join hands with Martha and face our losses together. We can “weep with those who weep” as taught by God’s word. We can go around the circle telling our own stories and listening to theirs. We can feel the bubble of pain that won’t come to the surface. We can feel the tsunami of grief that won’t stop pouring out our pain. It doesn’t matter how we would describe it, we have a stage with Jesus as much as Martha did.

   That’s why I am going no further than this today. My experience with church folk is that we have a hard time stopping and feeling. We miss out on so many facets of getting to know God because we won’t admit how we are doing. We won’t pray like Martha did. We won’t talk to Jesus like our IF-Onlys matter to him. We read these accounts like a grief brochure that tells us, “It ends with a resurrection!”, but do not stop and make the journey to the promised destination.

   But there is no immediate promise in this. A future one, yes. Absolutely. But this is a historical event. It happened then and there. It does not promise us that Jesus will always show up to raise a loved one from the dead, or to even change people’s minds about dying to us. That is not the promise.

   The absolute and unshakable promise in this is that there is a future resurrection for all who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord. Jesus came into the world to save sinners into the gracious gift of eternal life. ALL who believe in him will not perish but live with our Savior forever.

    However, there is another promise of our Savior that is illustrated in this death-and-life scene. As David said, there will still be our seasons of “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”. But the “You are with me” part is in effect for us even more profoundly than what David had experienced. That, “your rod and your staff, they comfort me” is still true and real, but more so in the person of the Holy Spirit who is Jesus’ “behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

   That’s why we talk to him in prayer the way Martha did in person. We pray about our If-Onlys like the one who could have healed those relationships cares about our grief, even while we lament that he chose not to do so.

    And when we will pour out our hearts to the Good Shepherd like Martha did, and admit whatever is going on in there the way David did, there is a promise. Not for a physical resurrection of a deceased loved one now. Not for a relational resurrection of loved ones who disowned us. But the opportunity to get to know our Savior today, in our grief, better than we have ever known him before. Yes, THAT is a promise!

    Paul expressed it like this,

   “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (II Corinthians 1:3-4).

   Yes, I have many times been comforted by God in my grief. I have accepted that, if he taught his children to “weep with those who weep”, it is what he is like as well (we will soon see that “Jesus wept” at Lazarus’s tomb even just minutes before raising him from the dead!).

   And so, I trust that sharing my stage in personal application of the stage John is describing to us will be an added wave of comfort to others on whatever stages we are living on. Martha invites us to remain steadfast in the faith we had in Jesus before any loss shattered our souls. And if we will keep relating to him about everything we go through, we will continue getting to know him in the real and personal ways that are shouting out to us from the pages of Scripture.

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)