Lazarus come forth

When Jesus was told Lazarus was sick and He responded basically that there was no hurry, Lazarus was going to die. Picture yourself as one of the disciples at this point. The disciples knew Jesus and Lazarus were friends and now this response. I'm sure that it seemed that the Jesus they knew that healed people had suddenly changed. How could He be so callus to dismiss the problem of His close friend? Jesus figured on fixing the problem, but the disciples couldn't imagine how He would be able to fix it? Perhaps even if they had left right away it may have been too late anyway.

Lazarus had been dead 4 days by the time Jesus and the disciples showed up. Mary refused to run to meet Jesus. What would you have felt at that time? I'm sure I would have been feeling hurt, angry, disillusioned, and wondering if Jesus had lied to her about caring for them.

I, at this time, take a look at this story and think about how I felt when my position was eliminated. Mary and I would have commiserated. It seems like God has abandoned you when He knew there was a problem and appeared to ignore it. You feel like saying, as Martha did, "You could have done something about this. Where were you? Why didn't you?" I wonder if the tears Jesus cried were more about the pain He saw in Mary and Martha than about the death of Lazarus, since He knew He was about to raise Lazarus. Jesus ordered the stone rolled away and then Lazarus to come out. I look at this as the waiting time for another job to appear and the steps that have to be taken for my job hunt to result in a resurrection. The ultimate lesson here has nothing to do with Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It is entirely an emphasis on God being glorified. Perhaps that is why God doesn't always answer our prayers right away. He wants the glory and if He gave us everything we prayed for every time, it would appear that the glory would go to us. We prayed, it happened, not we prayed, God made it happened.

The incident with Lazarus also was a type of prep for Jesus own death and resurrection.