My Lazarus

 

If you will, you can make me clean. (Mark 1:40) I hear my own heart in the words of this desperate leper. He knows that God can do anything, but He isn’t sure that He wants to. Jesus’ ability isn’t up for debate, but apparently His heart is. Is this true?

It’s likely years of shame which has this leper questioning whether Jesus would want to heal him. This leper knows that Jesus can heal him, but why would he want to? Not this is the line I love, v:41: Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed”

Jesus is moved with compassion and then He does the unthinkable…He touches the leper. And rather than Jesus getting leprosy and becoming unclean He heals the leper. That’s good gospel stuff right there. It doesn’t matter how much shame or darkness or dirtiness or brokenness you have, when you call Jesus, He is going to answer to you.

But then I think of Martha.“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

She, like the leper, isn’t questioning Jesus’ ability. She’s not even questioning His heart. If Jesus had been here, then He would have made sure Lazarus didn’t die. What she is questioning is Jesus’ timing, the goodness of God’s planning.

And that leads to where I occasionally wrestle with. I know that God is able. I know for a fact that He loves me, I’ve got story after story from my own life.

But what if His love means that Lazarus still dies? What if for the glory of God my Lazarus dies?

He is still good. He still loves me. He still is doing everything that is ultimately best for me. But it’s not what I would have chosen. Will I trust Him then? This is where those who question God’s existence get really frustrated with us.

We say God miraculously heals someone. We see the hand of God in someone’s cancer going into remission. We attribute this to God instead of medical science. Point for Team-Jesus.

Then when God doesn’t heal someone… we continue to believe that God is good and does us good. We say things like “He has a better plan” or “He decided to heal in His time”.

If God could heal someone, if God loves us, then why in the world would He not always heal? And if he doesn’t always heal doesn’t it mean that either He doesn’t exist or He isn’t good? Not at all! Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

It just means - the story isn’t over.