Dear Family and Friends:
Have you ever faced crushingly disappointing circumstances? You understood Romans 8:28… God’s love and ultimate power over everything that happens for your ultimate good. Yet did it seem that the outworking of that plan lacked consideration for your present peace, comfort and wholeness?
It may be that you can sympathize with Nancy, a Ghanian girl now living in London, who joined me in our weekly Biblical counseling online forum last Thursday feeling hurt and distant towards God. I know I could sympathize with her as she blurted: “Today is my last hope. Even if I try to pray, I just cry.”
Nancy is a new Christian. Last October, she reached the lowest point in her life, when, in her words, “I realised I lived a selfish and sinful life and many problems were crushing down on me… I went to Jesus and poured out my heart and mind to Him…”
As she prayed to receive Christ, she gained hope and a future… but her present troubles didn't just vanish: “Mike, I want to change everything about me. I've done a lot of wrong… but people keep reminding me of what I was, and I'm paying for it.”
In this life, since we don't experience God in terms of literal gestures of physical comfort or even a visual image of His caring face, it’s easy to misinterpret our circumstances. We can get the wrong impression that He coldly seeks our ultimate good at the expense of our current emotional well-being.
We know His best is in store for us… like Martha told Jesus, disappointedly, “I know he (Lazarus, her dead brother), will rise again in the resurrection, at the last day…” but the missing part of the sentence, the thought that trailed off into respectful silence, cried out that she had hoped for God’s intervention in the here-and-now. Have you been there?
Martha and Mary both moaned their grief and disappointment to Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Both of their statements were true. The implication that the Lord was indifferent about their present circumstances, however, was not true. It wasn't true for Mary and Martha. It’s not true for Nancy, and it’s not true for you and I.
“But why doesn't he show you that he cares, and why do you just continue to pray,” Nancy asked.
The Bible assures us He does care, and He does show us. He not only died for us… He lived for us. And He lives for us today. With great vulnerability, He put Himself in the middle of Mary and Martha’s anguish and shared it:
“Jesus wept.”
The shortest verse in the Bible is reverent in its lack of adornment.