Timing is Everything, a devotional thought

The time Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead is one of the best-known and most cherished stroies in the Gospel of John. It's the one that gave us Jesus's powerful statement about being "the Resurrection and the Life," and one of the best-known (and easily memorized) verses in the Bible, "Jesus wept." There's a subtext to the story, though, that often gets overlooked but is curcial to understanding the meaning of this miracle.

In John 11:3-6, they send word to Jesus that his friend Lazarus is dying, and in verse 6 it says, Jesus loved Lazarus, “yet when he heard that he was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.” Martha will bring this up with him, when Jesus finally comes to see them, after Lazarus has died. “Lord,” she says (v. 21) “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” This is a difficult thing to wrap our heads around, but Jesus delayed his coming to Lazarus, even though, admittedly, that delay caused him and his friends great pain, because there was a deeper, greater glory to be revealed in his delay than could be revealed in his coming immediately. In v.14 he says specifically that it was for the disciples’ sake (and presumably we’re included in that) he didn’t go heal Lazarus immediately, "in order that they might believe." This is a reference, I think, to his raising of Lazarus from the dead, and the profound witness to His glory the resuscitated life of Lazarus will become (11:45, 12:17, etc.). In other words, he delayed, so that Lazarus might pass on, so that he might raise him from the dead, so that many would come to believe in response to this miracle.

There is a hard but beautiful truth here, I think, for anyone who is waiting on Jesus for something, and he is delaying. Hard, because it is sometimes difficult to hold tight to him through that delay (hear again Martha’s pain: “Lord, if you had only been here ....”). But beautiful because, if Lazarus’s story can be trusted, Jesus can bring deeper faith, greater witness, brighter glory out of the waiting, even the disappointment, if we’ll give it to him.