When Jesus saw her weeping, and the people who had come with her weeping, he was intensely moved in spirit and greatly distressed … Jesus wept … But some of them said, “This is the man who caused the blind man to see! Couldn’t he have done something to keep Lazarus from dying?” (John 11:33-37)
Her almond eyes couldn’t hold a focus. For a single heartbeat she saw me, then rocked her head away. A skeletal two-year-old lay in Chennai, India, her crib pushed away from the others, panting her last breaths. While our team toured the orphanage, Jesus led me to stroke the girl’s head, pray, and cry over the life that would never be on earth.
Before our Lord resurrected Lazarus, he took time to weep over his death. He had already declared he would bring his friend back to life, so why waste time grieving? Why not skip the heartache, restore life, and move on to rejoicing? Because when death visits, we should enter its pain, confess its source, and learn from its horror.
To answer the critics of Jesus, yes, he could have prevented the expiration of Lazarus, as well as the orphan girl in India. Instead, he mourned them, just as he mourned the day Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He realized their knowledge included curses and death. Now he mourns that we have the same knowledge.
Beginning with Adam, each of us followed Eve and ate after her in our own way. The curses of hunger, death, hatred, and more destruction than we can recount, poison every part of our life. The dark knowledge Adam and Eve came to know, we know equally well.
Jesus has promised that one day, soon, he will make everything new. No more tears, death, mourning, pain, and no more curse. But why not today? Because today is for mourning. We must weep so that, after creation is restored, we will remember what the tree made us know. Remember Lazarus, remember the orphan girl, and all the breadth of suffering an earthly lifetime can hold. Remember so we will never in all eternity eat from a forbidden tree again.
Prayer: Jesus, let me mourn death now that I might celebrate life through eternity.