“Jesus wept.” John 11:35
Lord Jesus, it’s the shortest, but perhaps it’s the most profound verse in the Bible. Your hot, compassionate tears shed outside Lazarus’s tomb, are one of the greatest showers that have fallen on the face of the earth.
You knew, within moments, Lazarus would breathe again; yet you wailed as his cold body laid motionless in the tomb. Those observing the moment said, “See how he loved him!” (John 11:36). No one hates death more than you—no one feels its horrid implications more profoundly. And no one loves each of us more than you do.
No one will welcome the Day of “no more death and dying” more earnestly than you (Rev. 21:4). No one has done more to secure death’s utter obliteration.
Jesus, as we approach Palm Sunday, then Easter, we regale you as “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). Your death was the death of death itself—the last enemy (1 Cor. 15:26).
Because of your resurrection, we sing in advance of ours, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55) Death is now working backwards, with a view to the Day when all things will be new, right, and beautiful forever.
We praise and exalt you, Lord Jesus. We rest our often-heavy, sometimes-confused, at-times-demanding hearts in your strong and loving hands. So very Amen we pray, in your grave-robbing, life-giving name.