Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” John 11: 25,26

We spend a lot of time waiting, don't we? Waiting rooms are everywhere: doctor’s offices, hospitals, the oil change place. We wait at stop lights and in checkout lines. We wait in school parking lots for our kids’ practices to be over. I’ve lived at least a third of my life in various school car rider lines!

There are other kinds of waiting, too.

Waiting for the coach to put us in the game, waiting for test scores, waiting to hear the results of college application submissions, waiting for a job offer. Waiting for the positive pregnancy test. Waiting for biopsy results, waiting for treatments to work, waiting for the final breath, waiting for broken hearts to mend. Sometimes there’s waiting for revenge, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and of course there's the good old, “I’ll just wait and see.”

What happens in the waiting?

We protest. We’re impatient. Some rage, some become indifferent (a quieter form of rage, yes?). The longer the waiting and the more dire the circumstances, the more far off hope seems. In the waiting we have a choice to remain soft and expectant or hardened and bitter, no matter the outcome.

When Martha heard Jesus was approaching, she ran out to meet him. “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. (v21) Followed immediately with, “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” (v22) She’s sad/angry/hurt, because she knows Jesus could have healed her brother before he died, but she still believes: in who Jesus said he was, not only what he could do for her grief.

Jesus did more than empathize with Mary and Martha after the death of their brother: he fully entered into the grief, anger, and protest generated by Lazarus’s death. Jesus fully enters our emotions in the waiting, too. 

In order to get to God's resurrection we have to pass through "death" of one kind or another.  Jesus is there with us while we wait.

Are you in “the waiting?” He’s with you in it, whether you’ve been there for four days or four years. Ask him to increase your trust today, even if you can’t see the purpose in the waiting just yet.