Jesus Wept

Jesus wept!

I didn’t cry publicly but I definitely had several very long public pauses! It was a most difficult honor when when asked to speak at the memorial service for a young woman I’ve know since she was seven years old.

The day Betsy passed got a whole lot worse for all who loved her, but because of her fervent faith in Jesus it got a whole lot better for her! As the Scriptures say, “To live is Christ and to die is gain!” (Phil. 1:21). Betsy is now with the Lord, and who could possibly wish anything more for Betsy than that!

J.I. Packer suggested we start each day rehearsing several truths:

1) God is my Father;

2) Heaven is my home;

3) Every day I'm one day nearer.

Betsy’s seven year struggle was at times an exceedingly painful one but for the most part an exceedingly private one. She didn’t want others to be distracted by her suffering so she determined to live joyfully every day. Betsy was a determined disciple of Christ, she did not have an easy end, but she did have a devoted one. Betsy finished her journey well, she finished it more in love with Jesus and her family at the end than at the beginning!

So, in our grief, we honored her; however, we did not wish her back only to die again. For as the apostle Paul said, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.”

I once talked with a friend after the death of his wife, and he told me something stunning. He shared how he was team teaching a SS class in his California church and shortly after his wife passed it was his turn to teach again. His friends offered to teach for him but he insisted he needed to do it, only to discover that the lesson was based on the shortest text in the English Bible from John 11:35: “Jesus wept.”

You may recall the context of that verse is the death of Lazarus and the reaction of Jesus just before Jesus raised him from the dead. The traditional interpretations of the verse are usually about how the humanity of Jesus made Him, even with His Divinity, familiar with the deep human emotion of grief, and to be sure He was. However, my friend saw something else, my friend who dearly loved his wife said, “Now I see that story differently. As much as I miss her, I would never wish her back only to have to die all over again!”

Well, right after Betsy passed I happened to read the words of C.S. Lewis after the loss of his beloved wife, Joy. They were powerful and pertinent. Lewis said, “Having got once through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do over again … could I have wished her anything worse?”

One thing for sure, unless Christ returns first, none of us are going to get out of this world alive, that’s true for you and for the person living right beside you. None of us are going to get out of this world without going through the door of death. Sooner or later we will all pass on, for we are not right now in the land of the living, going to the land of the dying. Rather, for all who have placed their trust in Christ, we can do so with the confidence that we have left the land of the dying and entered the land of the living.

When it’s my time to die I hope to be missed, but I don’t want anyone to wish me back to die all over again!,