This question popped into my head and caused me to ponder about the few delays to things I had hoped would be resolved by now.
In another moment, Daddy directed me to the story of Lazarus and I thought about drawing some similarities between his experience and Mine? Who am I anyway? Actually I am God’s beloved daughter. He came a long, long way to save me. I do well to remember and dwell on that. He has brought me through so much, constantly showing His love and mercy. How I hate the times when I think He’s quiet….
There’s a famous saying that the teacher is quiet during a test. I am learning that He’s with me always. Even when the storms are raging.
Back to Lazarus story.
Jesus was told that Lazarus was sick but for His own reasons chose to delay, wait a little longer before attending to his sisters’ request. We are told that He loved them very much and yet did not quite respond the way they expected. Imagine sending a telegram, message chat, whatsapp, text, leaving several voicemails about one issue to a close friend and they don’t respond! How irritating, hurtful and annoying to know that the messages are read, delivered and there’s no reply. So what do you do next? Surrender to the somewhat inevitable right? Well if Help did not come in time, then you deal with the situation at hand as much as you can. In this case, they carry on hoping that Jesus would come and He doesn’t for whatever reasons there were.
Imagine what must be going through their mind. Jesus? Jesus who loved them but could not make time for them? Jesus who did not immediately come to the rescue? I think it would have been an easy option to stop believing in Jesus love for them. They had even added to the message, “the one you love is sick!”
Jesus told those with him about the message but did not seem to be in a hurry. Wow! Maybe He knew something we don’t know. He mainly said “there shall be no death!” No death. He’s dying and yet. No death.
He discusses with his disciples about Lazarus sleeping. He called it sleeping. Isn’t that downplaying things a bit? Anyhow they (with him) thought that they could go along with Jesus to sleep or die with Lazarus. Jesus said He was glad that this was happening for them to see God’s power.
So when He finally answers the call, after a few, 2 days, when it was too late, he meets with accusation. Martha said “if you had been here, my brother would not have died” but her sister, Mary came to kneel at His feet acknowledging his lordship and says the same words. The words were similar but reactions very different.
Could it be that they both knew a different Jesus individually? Actually it seems we were given some insight into how Mary had loved to sit at Jesus feet, worshipping Him. Martha added that the body had a bad odour at this time dwelling on the seriousness of the situation.
So Jesus reacted to Mary. He wept. Can you believe he weeps for us too, in our pain?
So Jesus prays by thanking God the father for hearing him always.
Think about that next time when there’s an extreme delay to your prayer requests. God hears always…
I do not know why He “seems” to procrastinate but He Hears. Always. He loves to answer too. Chew on that for a while…
So He calls Lazarus to come forth- to come back to life! So he wakes up and is alive for all to see.
What did the people think? They wanted to kill him again, so they plotted his death.
What would you do?
My books are published here
Arinola Araba 