Jesus Wept

It is two words long and everybody can produce it on demand. We come to gravesides the same way, arriving with the ending already in our mouths. He arrived with the ending too.

He was carrying no uncertainty into that moment. He had said what he intended before he set out, and said it again to Martha on the road: Thy brother shall rise again. He is minutes from doing it. In between, Mary falls at his feet, the crowd is weeping, and somebody says the thing that always gets said. Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died? He gives no answer to it. He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and asked where they had put him. Jesus wept. Isaiah had written that he would be a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and this is where you watch it happen.

Lord, you stood at that grave holding the answer and you cried anyway. We do not understand it and we are not going to work it out today. Hebrews says you prayed with strong crying and tears, so we are bringing ours without tidying them first. Stay at the grave with us for as long as this takes. Amen.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 154 is Ordered Steps (Psalm 37:23).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two