TOTHEUNTAMEDHEART.

Sometimes I think we look to the Bible to relate to our lives a little too much.

I have nothing against making the message a little more meaningful & applicable, & how could we not take something away from a God-breathed book. But sometimes I think the ‘what this has to do with me’ fogs the ‘who are you God’ part. & that kind of reminds me of how self-absorbed we really can be.

So as of late, I’ve been reading the Gospels, looking for pieces of God. Who he is, not where I fall in the Bible. & today I read when Jesus comforted sisters Mary & Martha after Lazarus had died. (John 11:17-37)

& its the verse everyone knows that hit me, the one in Bible trivia that nobody ever gets wrong.

What is the shortest Bible verse? Jesus wept.

It bugs me how casually we think about that verse when you think about all the truth that really holds.

Who is our God? A God who comes to meet us in our brokenness & cry with us, even when he might be a second away from a miracle.

He knew what was about to happen. He knew what had seemed so final, four days of death, was nothing more than God’s divine setup to receive the glory. & to think even further back to the moment he & his disciples were met by the messenger, telling him that his friend Lazarus was dead, he had already known that, right? He was just as much God as he was man. But he still felt moved to such compassion that he wept.

To me wept is more than a couple tears slipping pass the eyelids. Wept is the big tears where the lump in your throat seems to expand with every gasped breath. Wept isn’t pity. Wept is truly being moved deeply.

Our God isn’t an emotionless God who wants no part of our daily messes, friends.

Our God is a God who knows our sorrows & fears & joys &, yet, still wants to hear us whisper them to him in the middle of our days. He is a God who listens for our voice & has feelings through our tellings. Real happiness, tears, & anger.

Psalm 56:8 says God keeps track of all our sorrows, collects all our tears in his bottle, that he records each one in his book.

Who is our God? He’s our Father & our bestest bestie (as my daughter would say). & when I think about what Paul said in Romans, if God is for us who can be against us, & I consider my bottled tears & how present he is when they’re rolling down my cheeks. & when I imagine in our conversation the tears he’s shedding for me, too, Paul’s words hold so much more meaning.

If God is our Father & friend & all of thee above, what’re we missing out on?