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.)
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