Author: Chris

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

What great things to be asking for, and also what amazing things to display in life. It’s my prayer that through the grace of God I can do a better job exhibiting those attributes in my life. ‘Nuff said.

It’s the shortest verse in the Bible (John 11:35). When I was growing up, it was the memory verse that we always begged our Sunday School teachers to give us. It’s a widely known verse, yet it’s a verse that I don’t think most followers of Christ understand the full significance of. Here, we have Jesus, the son of God crying. The only perfect person in the history of the word spurting tears.

So why was Jesus crying? If you look at the context, the story is the death of Lazarus. All of John 11 talks about Lazarus’ death and Jesus raising him from the dead. Essentially, Jesus that heard that his friend Lazarus was sick. Jesus stayed where he was for two days, then came. When he arrived, Lazarus was already dead. Mary and Martha show Jesus where Lazarus had been buried, and Jesus saw the grave and wept. The story doesn’t end here. Just a few verses later, Lazarus walks out of the tomb on Jesus’ command. When Jesus wept, he knew the next part of the story. He knew that on his command, Lazarus would return to life from death. But I don’t think that it was Lazarus who made Jesus cry.

Mary and Martha had already had several days to mourn Lazarus when Jesus arrived, but with the death of a close friend, I’m sure they were still torn up with grief. At that time, what Mary and Martha needed wasn’t a miracle, but a shoulder to cry on. Jesus knew what came next, but he joined in with his friends in their sorrow, and through that supported them. Jesus, fully God and fully man, used his human emotions to connect with those people who he loved.

And the same is true for followers of Jesus today. When we come to Jesus, he offers us a shoulder to cry on. He also offers us healing and forgiveness, but he comes to us where we’re at and enters into our suffering with us. Taking it to Jesus isn’t the fast solution, but it’s the only way where we can find support in our times of need and hope for the future.

So many times, I’ve set up my life with a fortress to keep God out fearing giving the Almighty power over me. But that’s just what this story is about, recognizing that God is a god of love and he sent his son Jesus into the world so that we could have a more intimate relationship with Him. Jesus’ weeping is our reassurance that God cares about his children and wants to be deeply involved with their lives. Today, let that thought encourage and comfort you.

An excellent talk on this verse was given by my friend John several months ago called Almighty Tears.

One of the Christian traditions that many evangelical Christians have never experienced is lent. While this tradition isn’t important to a person’s salvation or anything along those lines, tradition can help us prepare for big celebrations in the life of the church and see that our faith today is part of a larger story that goes back centuries. Here is how the Christian Research Institute describes lent:

Originating in the fourth century of the church, the season of Lent spans 40 weekdays beginning on Ash Wednesday and climaxing during Holy Week with Holy Thursday (Maundy Thursday), Good Friday, and concluding Saturday before Easter. Originally, Lent was the time of preparation for those who were to be baptized, a time of concentrated study and prayer before their baptism at the Easter Vigil, the celebration of the Resurrection of the Lord early on Easter Sunday. But since these new members were to be received into a living community of Faith, the entire community was called to preparation. Also, this was the time when those who had been separated from the Church would prepare to rejoin the community.

Today, Lent is marked by a time of prayer and preparation to celebrate Easter . . . The number 40 is connected with many biblical events, but especially with the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness preparing for His ministry by facing the temptations that could lead him to abandon his mission and calling. Christians today use this period of time for introspection, self examination, and repentance. (Source)

In the last hundred years, the observance of lent has generally been about giving something up, like meat or chocolate. However, I think a better way to celebrate lent is not to focus on the 40 day period itself, but to use it as a time to start something larger. Maybe you haven’t been at all consistent about praying. Commit to use lent to jump start your prayer life–but don’t stop when lent is over. Maybe you have stuff in your life that seperates you from God. Use lent to get rid of those things and draw closer to God–but don’t let that junk back in when lent is over.

Lent was originally intended to be a time of personal growth, and while simply giving something that you enjoy up for several weeks can remind you of Jesus’ suffering, I feel that it’s more beneficial and more historically accurate to see lent as a time of new beginnings and preparation instead of a period of self denial.