Hope for Caregivers: Three Ways Christ Carries Your GriefSýnishorn

“Lord, he whom you love is ill.”

This is the message Martha and Mary sent to Jesus about their brother Lazarus. And with these words, John begins an elaborate retelling of Jesus’ intimate, if at first confusing, form of caregiving for these three siblings.

The passage tells us that “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,” which makes what follows a little disconcerting: “So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was” (John 11:5–6).

The One, whom the sisters knew had the power to heal their beloved brother when he was on his deathbed, did not run to his side. At their time of greatest need, He did not come right away. He tarried at a distance.

This is why, when Jesus finally came two days later, Martha said to Him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (v. 21).

Do you hear the ache in her if?

Perhaps you have your own aching if questions you’ve asked the Lord in this season. What if our marriage doesn’t make it? What if God doesn’t heal my loved one? What if God doesn’t show up in the way I’m begging him to?

Jesus responds to Martha’s if question not by telling her why He waited but by revealing who it is that stands before her: “I am the resurrection and the life,” He says. “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (vv. 25–26).

In her deep pain and need, in the midst of feeling that the Lord didn’t come through for her, Jesus tells Martha that what she really needs in this valley of the shadow of death is the One who is with her at that very moment—He who is able to resurrect both Lazarus and Martha from the dead, whether He does it right now or “on the last day” (v. 24b).

What she needs, more than a resurrection, is the source of it.