Velvet Backdrops

“Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” John 11:40

We have all begged God to work something out in our lives that we were sure was pleasing to Him: the healing of a friend from breast cancer, the saving of a family member far from God, the protection of our loved ones or babies to survive pregnancy.

I have frequently visited the story of Lazarus; finding comfort in Jesus’ choice to grieve with his friends and justice in His anger at death itself. Nestled within the miracle of raising Lazarus, John 11:40 seems to connect belief in God with God doing what you’ve been asking Him to do. Oh how we wish we really had that kind of control.

“If you believed you would see the glory of God.”

Jesus spoke these words to a tenacious Martha. She was trying to tell Jesus that if he opened Lazarus’ tomb, it would stink! Because Martha understood the earthly reality of death, it seems that her mind was already trying to figure out new ways that God could move but opening up the tomb was off the list! What’s done was done.

We do that too. We look at the circumstances in our lives that seem like God has “answered” by allowing the worst. And like good little believers, we start making a new list of ways that He can work in our lives and still be the felt-board version of Himself that we want Him to be. We start rationalizing and explaining why He allowed the thing that hurts the most.

Martha wanted God’s work to be preventing the loss of her brother, but Jesus came to reveal the Glory of God.

The glory of God is not in how He choose to our answer our prayers. Gosh I wish it was, but it isn’t.

We want God to prevent our pain. But I think we see God’s glory most clearly in the pain. Like a black velvet backdrop behind a faceted diamond, suffering exposes all our bad theology and invites us to gaze on a beautiful and mysterious Savior.

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” ― C.S. Lewis

God can use the things that feel final and even evil - like death - to produce good fruit and faith. Christ’s death on the cross was a confusing finality for His followers, and yet it was the one necessary sacrifice for salvation.

We must be careful not to limit our faith to what we can see.

We must be willing to let God open what stinks because we would rather have the glory of God revealed to us than the miracle itself. It’s entirely possible that we would miss the work of God in our pain simply because we won’t let God into our sealed tombs. We won’t grieve with Him, let Him see our doubts and hurts and let Him smell the stink of our humanity.

God has used the darkness of my grief and doubting to illuminate who God is, what He says about me, and what He can do. When I was miscarrying, I had to decide whether I was really going to follow Jesus. I had to confront the human betrayal I felt and whether or not I believed God loved me.

Walking with God in death and loss has helped me see that faith in God is a choice not a feeling. I do not follow God because if I do then I will get the life I want. I do not follow God because if I do then I will avoid pain.

I follow Jesus because I believe, and I want to see the glory of God.

This doesn’t minimize my suffering. It casts the comforting glow of Jesus all over it. My suffering becomes the deep black velvet backdrop where His glory will shine through. The Savior who doesn’t dismiss my grief but shows me how to suffer with Jesus – like Jesus. He helps me to plant the seed of faith in the storm of loss and keep my eyes on the clouds in full faith that the glory of God is right there behind them and I will see it one day.

I decide to follow Jesus not because He gives me everything I want but because He is everything I want.

May it be so, Lord.