Quit Calling It Small

Anybody who has ever put in a garden knows you don’t walk where you’re going to plant. You till the ground, you lay out your rows, and then you’re careful about your feet — because compacted soil won’t let a seed take root. Drop good seed on a footpath and the birds get it before it ever has a chance.

I’ve been thinking about that all week, because I think a lot of us are walking around with a few square feet of asphalt where soil ought to be. Not the whole heart. Just patches. And I don’t think we put it there on purpose.

Here’s how I think it happens.

Somebody dies. A marriage ends. A diagnosis comes. And within about a day, we start saying the things we’ve been trained to say. It wasn’t that bad. So-and-so had it a lot worse. It could’ve been worse than it was. I should be over this by now.

I do a fair number of funerals, and I’ll tell you plainly: Americans are terrible at grieving. In a farming community like ours it’s worse, because we’ve made a virtue out of grit. Gotta be tough. Get ‘er done. Pick yourself up. Don’t cry, and whatever you do, don’t let anybody see weakness in you. I’m a Lions fan; I speak the language. But the same instinct that makes a man good in a hard season also makes him terrible at admitting he’s in one.

Four days late, and no explanation

John 11 is the story of a family Jesus loved. Lazarus gets sick, his sisters send word, and Jesus — who is about a day’s walk away — stays put for two more days. By the time He arrives, Lazarus has been in the grave four days. The funeral is over. The stone is in place.

Here’s what strikes me about it: Jesus never explains Himself. Not to Martha. Not to Mary. Not to the crowd. John is a writer who loves to add commentary, and he offers none here. If you came to this chapter looking for a satisfying answer to why God allows suffering, you will leave without one.

What the chapter does tell you is what God is like when suffering is in the room.

Martha meets Him first, and she says the thing everybody in that town had been thinking: Lord, if only you had been here. Then she starts saying the correct things — I know God will give You whatever You ask, I know he’ll rise at the last day. Textbook theology. Every word of it true, and none of it doing a thing for her, because twelve verses later she’s the one saying don’t roll back that stone, he’ll stink.

Watch what Jesus does with that. He doesn’t correct her. He had grounds to, and He doesn’t take them. He doesn’t hand her better theology; He hands her Himself. Not I will be the resurrection. “I am the resurrection and the life” — present tense, standing right in front of her.

Then Mary comes and says the exact same sentence, except she can’t get past it. She just falls apart at His feet. One sister processed out loud, one collapsed in silence, and neither one got rebuked. That ought to settle something for you: God is not offended by your grief, and He’s not offended by your questions.

The shortest verse in the Bible

When Jesus gets to the tomb, John says a deep anger welled up in Him. The word underneath that carries the picture of a horse snorting — something rising up hard and fast. Some commentators think He was angry at their unbelief. I don’t find that persuasive. I think He was angry at death, standing where it was never supposed to stand.

And then two words: Jesus wept.

Understand what that means. He had already announced how this ends. He knew that in about ten minutes He was going to call a dead man by name and that dead man was going to walk out into the daylight with his graveclothes still on him. If anybody in history ever had the standing to say don’t worry about it, it’s not that bad — it was Him, at that moment.

He didn’t say it. He didn’t tell them to toughen up. He didn’t offer that everything happens for a reason, or that God needed another angel, or that God won’t give you more than you can handle. Those lines are meant to comfort. What they actually do is compact.

He wept.

So here’s the ask

If Jesus refused to make their loss small, I don’t know why we’re so committed to making ours small.

I think I know, actually. If it was big — as big as it really was — then somebody has to explain it, and we’re afraid of what God might say. So we shrink it. Partly to protect our own hearts, and partly, I think, to protect Him. Church, God doesn’t need you to protect Him from your story.

So this week, one thing. Name whatever you’ve been calling small. Say it out loud, quietly, in the truck on the way to work. Write it down if that’s easier. You don’t have to fix it. You don’t have to forgive anybody yet. You don’t have to know what it means or why it happened.

Just quit calling it small.

And if you’re not carrying much of anything right now — if you read all that and mostly thought of somebody else — then you’re the crowd in this story, and don’t miss what Jesus did with them. He raised the dead man Himself. Then He handed the graveclothes to the people standing there. Unwrap him, and let him go.

You’re not going to set anybody free. That’s His work. But somebody near you is still tripping over what’s wrapped around their arms, and they don’t need you to fix it or explain it. Go sit with them. If you have to say something, say you’re sorry they’re going through this. Then stay.

Jesus never once said, “It isn’t that bad.” You can stop saying it too.

“It’s Not Supposed To Be This Way” — From Pain to Purpose, Week 2, from John 11. Union City Wesleyan Church, Sundays at 10:45 AM, 202 Saint Joseph St, Union City, MI.