Experiences of trauma can make it difficult to be confident: is Jesus safe to allow in? We have been looking at the story of Martha, Mary, Lazarus, and Jesus, and to remind ourselves of Lazarus’s perspective: he believed Jesus could heal him. He counted Jesus as a...
“There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother”
It is a completely normal response to suffering to wonder if God cares.
Honestly, he has a whole world to manage. A whole universe. And in that world are literally billions of people. Billions are, in fact, suffering. Plus he is working out plans that affect the whole human race, and those plans affect everybody’s eternal well-being.
Special days of the year are complicated for many people, and Easter Sunday is no different. It might be worth noting that on the first Easter Sunday, God had always known how things would turn out, but Jesus’ friends and followers didn’t. Even that morning, once Jesus had risen, there was a delay between the fact of hope and his disciples’ experience of it.
It’s not that they weren’t interested in hope. Mary Magdalene went down to the tomb while it was still dark that morning, and even when Jesus stood right in front of her it took her time to recognise him. For poor Thomas, who, (we see in the Lazarus story), had been willing to die with him, it was a week before he shifted from despair to reality.
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