Resisting the Wilderness: Part of the beauty of this story is that it does not erase our mourning. Sometimes we want to skip over grief—our own or the grief of others—to get to the promise of resurrection and new life. We use the promise of life to try to erase the pains of death, but this passage shows us that we can hold both at the same time. Through the whole story, Jesus has plans to resurrect Lazarus, but still weeps when he witnesses and experiences the pain of his friend’s death. This reading holds the tension that life springs forth from unexpected places, and the pain of loss is still real—a tension many of us grapple with in our lives. Scripture: John 11:1-45
