Yesterday's chapter said you can not know why and still know Who. Today's Faith Builder looks at a moment where Jesus Himself lets that tension stand — on purpose.
The Message From Bethany
In John 11, Jesus' close friend Lazarus is seriously ill. His sisters, Martha and Mary, send Jesus a short message: "Lord, the one you love is sick" (verse 3). They don't even ask Him to come. They don't think they need to. He loves Lazarus. Of course He'll come.
The Most Confusing "So" in the Bible
Then come verses 5 and 6: "Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days."
Read that slowly. He loved them. So He stayed.
Not "even though He loved them, He stayed." John deliberately puts Jesus' love and Jesus' delay in the same breath. By the time He arrives in Bethany, Lazarus has been in the tomb four days. Martha meets Him on the road and says what nearly everyone in grief has said to God at some point: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died" (verse 21).
The Misconception: Love Explains Itself
Here's what most of us assume: if God really loved me, He'd explain what He's doing — or at least move faster. Silence and delay feel like evidence against His love.
John 11 dismantles that. Jesus knew exactly what He was about to do. He was minutes away from calling Lazarus out of the grave. And still, standing at the tomb, verse 35 says simply: "Jesus wept."
He didn't give Martha a theological explanation for the delay. He gave her a declaration about Himself — "I am the resurrection and the life" (verse 25) — and He gave her His tears.
For This Week
That's the heart of Position 2. Cade Thompson's song lands in the same place: a long list of things he doesn't know, and one thing he does — he's loved, and the cross proves it.
If you're in a waiting season, try holding both truths at once today, out loud: "I don't understand His timing. And He loves me." Neither one cancels the other. In John 11, they're in the same sentence.
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