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Weekly Devotion
John 11:33, 38
33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.
38 Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it.
Does God care about us in our pain? Unanswered prayers in times of suffering may incite such a question and engender doubts about his existence and/or goodness. See that the account of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus back from the dead gives us a window into the heart of our Lord.
Does God care? Notice that the Apostle John describes Jesus as being "deeply moved." In fact, John uses this word twice in this passage to describe what Christ was feeling. In the Greek, this word means "to be very angry, to be moved with indignation." It was used, in their time, to describe the angry snorting of horses just before they charged. Therefore, in this passage, John is conveying that Jesus was very angry.
Angry at what? Based on the context of the chapter, it was not merely the death of Lazarus, for Jesus knew he would raise him back to life (John 11:4, 23). Thus, what moved Jesus was the sight of those he loved weeping under the curse of death. It was their sorrow, their tragedy, their helplessness. In other words, it was the shadow of sin’s destruction that provoked his righteous anger.
Does God care about us in our pain? Of course he does; he is not indifferent to our struggles. John 11 teaches us that our suffering matters to him because he loves us. And in that, he does not neglect or skip over our sorrow. He walks through it, for us and with us, to lead us in the living hope of his resurrection.