This weekend, I attended a funeral service for a child who never got the chance to take her first breath. She was near full-term, but never got the chance to meet her parents or her grandparents. She will never get to see a sunrise, experience laughter, or have her feet tickled while she giggles. 

Now, I know a common question is: Why would God allow something like this to happen?

Which is really the unspoken version of the following: If there is a God who is all-loving, how could he stay asleep when people are suffering? A sleeping God is no god at all, and so if people suffer, I’m out. There’s no way I could follow a god who would allow his people to suffer loss like this.

Maybe you’re feeling similarly when you look around at everything that’s going on in our culture today. Black vs. White. Masks vs. Non-Masks. Republican vs. Democrat. Fires vs. Floods.

If God loves us, then how could he allow such abject destruction, such hatred, such division? 

May I offer that perhaps we are asking the wrong questions?

The world has always been a broken place. (At least, since we tasted that appealing fruit hanging from the tree…) Floods, famines, division, and suffering have always been a part of humanity’s story.

And so perhaps a better question is not How can God let this happen, but instead Does God even care?

This is a question worth asking.

Because we’ll always have things that don’t go quite right, but when humanity stubs its toes, or breaks an arm, we want to know if we have a Father who cares that we’re in pain.

 

Does God even care?

  

Let’s go back in time to Jesus’ day. Even for those who don’t read their Bibles, many know the shortest verse in it: “Jesus wept.” 

Yep – now you can boast to your friends that you know more scripture than they do. It’s found in John 11:35 for those of you taking notes at home.

This is the only time in scripture that we hear about Jesus weeping, so if Jesus wept, then it is worth exploring what he wept about.

  

But before we do that, let’s dig a bit more into the word: wept.

If you find me in a corner weeping, what images come to mind? Would it be someone quietly sobbing, perhaps trying to avoid attention? Maybe you picture someone sad and disappointed, like a child learning that their Disneyland plans had been canceled due to COVID. (Or maybe you’re an adult who had an incredible family trip to Europe on the books for Summer 2020 and have been weeping quietly ever since. Or maybe that’s just me…)

To me, weeping connotes something minor, something quiet, something, like our Europe trip, that we’ll get over eventually. 

Weeping, to me, is a “that’s too bad – I’m disappointed but I’ll recover” kind of thing.

BUT – when we read that Jesus wept, it has an entirely different context.

The original word in the Greek actually refers to something coming from deep within; a grief of the soul. A more accurate depiction of “Jesus wept” would actually be “Jesus bellowed”.

Sit in that for a moment. 

Imagine the greatest teacher who ever lived, the chosen one, the rabbi… bellowing.

Can you picture the grief?

Maybe Jesus is doubled over. Maybe his hands are clutched to his wrenched face. Maybe he can barely stand under the emotional pain. 

Jesus bellowed.

 

Why?

Because his beloved friend, Lazarus, had died.

Because those he loved, Lazarus’ friends and family, were experiencing such grief over their loss. 

Because humans were suffering.

Jesus weeps.

 

The world Jesus lived in wasn’t a carefree, paint-by-numbers world. It was a world where suffering took place. Where loved ones died. Where people grieved.

And where is Jesus when all of that is happening? 

Weeping. 

Bellowing.

Feeling the pain right there alongside us.

  

Does God even care?

Oh, he cares alright.

  

This week, may you be comforted by knowing that, in spite of suffering, in spite of living in a really whacked-out world, there is a God out there who weeps alongside us. Who suffers when we suffer. Who cares.

Oh – and if you read on in the story, Jesus performs a crazy miracle that might surprise you. But the real meat to that miracle happens just before he brings Lazarus back from the dead. In a conversation with Lazarus’ sister, Martha, Jesus provides the secret to what he’s about to do.

And while people may talk about Lazarus’ first death, the fact of the matter is that he died again after Jesus rose him from the dead. Even the miracle was not immune to the suffering that is in the DNA of this world.

But the secret that Jesus tells Martha is a secret that can give us real hope.

It can give us hope that redemption can be found in our present-day circumstances, even now. 

But it also provides a much larger hope: that this precious little girl who never got to taste life will someday be held by her adoring mother, in a world where destruction, division, hatred, and even death have been locked away for eternity.

A world where God’s immeasurable love will be the only thing we experience.

And oh, what a beautiful world that will be…