God Is Moved By Our Lives!

This morning I felt like I should spend some time meditating on the following verses from the Gospel of John 11:32-36 NIV:

[32] "When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

[33] When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. [34] “Where have you laid him?” he asked.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

[35] Jesus wept.

[36] Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

The background of this story is that Jesus' god friend Lazarus had become gravely sick and died.  The sisters had sent for Jesus asking Him to come and heal Lazarus, but Jesus at the clear direction of the Father, had waited until after Lazarus died to start the journey to their house.  Jesus had been delayed by His obedience to the Father, and was now confronted by Mary, and their many friends weeping in sorrow.

Taking a step back to consider what Jesus has said in John 8:28-29 NIV: "So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. [29] The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.”  This statement by Jesus, and a similar one in John 14:9 where Jesus says that if we have seen Him, we have seen the Father, are critical to understanding the full impact of what was occurring in these verses.

If Jesus' statements about saying and doing only what the Father tells Him, and seeing Him is just like seeing the Father, then we can conclude that the Father was equally moved by the death of Lazarus!  The Father wept!  The Father was moved in spirit and troubled!  This is really amazing to me, that the Eternal Father, the creator of the Universe, the omnipotent, and omniscient one would experience sorrow over the death of one of His Son's friends!  Wow!

So often, I can think of God existing in Heaven, separated from Earth, and relatively unaffected by our sorrow and pain, and yet here we have a clear indication that Jesus understands our pain and suffering, our loss and sorrow!  If He does then the Father does, for they are one!

If you ever  wondered if God understood how bad you hurt, how depressed you are, how hopeless you felt, we have here a clear indication that He does!  Part of His coming to earth, which we celebrated yesterday, was to help us understand that He clearly does understand or pain, or loss, our emotions and He is moved by them!  God is not some far off God, who rules without empathy or compassion!  He is a God who is intimately acquainted with us, with our lives, with our thoughts and even with our losses.  He knows fully what it means to be helpless and hopeless, sorrowful and mourning.  This is not just true for those big events in our lives, but also true for our everyday existence, the very things we are dealing with today!

He loves us.  He is moved by our lives!  If we weep, it is likely He weeps!  This is the wonder of Christmas, God came down to earth and become man!

This morning I am grateful that Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit truly understand my life!  They understand me!  They are moved by my life!  They love me!  God understands my struggles, my fears, my sorrow and He is with me in them!  He does love me! He is with me in my sorrows and in my victories, my sadness and my joy!  He knows me!

Thank You Lord!