When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’” vs. 32
John 11:32-37
Mary’s words should not surprise us. They reflect a desire to assess blame in the face of death or some other calamity. Some of us have done the same thing. When things don’t go our way, the first impulse is to find a reason, and we regularly lash out at the people we think have failed us. This is one factor in the rising costs of medical treatment–liability insurance costs doctors and hospitals an enormous amount of money. And when we can’t find anyone to sue, sometimes, like Mary, we take our complaints to Jesus. We wonder why, when he clearly has promised to answer our prayers, there is absolutely no response when we ask him for help. It’s like he has deliberately ignored our requests. And so, when things go wrong, or loved ones die, he gets blamed. John says that Mary’s accusation triggered deep anguish in Jesus. When he saw her pain he began to weep. Mary wasn’t alone in her suffering. Jesus felt it too, and so it is for us when darkness creeps in and our prayers seem ineffectual. Jesus understands! And while there is no divine intervention of the kind we might prefer, we get something even better. We get the loving arms of Jesus, and in those moments we come close to the loving heart of God!
Thought for the Day: Who do I blame when things go wrong?
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