When You Think Your Hope is As Dead as Lazarus

Thank you for sharing!

There are two kinds of death. The kind where your heart stops, and the kind where your heart is all that hasn’t stopped. The first is obvious. Everyone knows when a body is dead. But few people know when your hope is dead, or that you’re virtually lying in the tomb next to it. Because you’re still breathing. Aren’t breathing people living people?

Not always as living as they might seem. But maybe not as dead as they think, either.

Reading through the journals I kept in high school, I have to ask myself repeatedly, “What happened?!” The entries were full of life, much of it teenage nonsense, I grant you, but I had a personality! I was a girl of random thoughts and simple dreams who laughed and was known occasionally to make others do so.

What happened to her?

Well, after many lonely years of unrealized hopes, Jesus got word that she was sick at heart. And he loved her. Therefore, he didn’t come. And she died.

Recognizing Love When Your Hope is Dead

Every time I read the account of Lazarus, I can’t help a slightly furrowed brow. See if these verses affect you the same way.

“…his sisters sent unto him saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was.”

What? Did something get lost in translation? As I read, “When he had heard therefore that he was sick,” I’m subconsciously finishing it with, “he went straightway to Lazarus’s bedside.” Isn’t that what love looks like? So, it’s a bit jarring to read instead that he basically did nothing.

Maybe that’s not so hard to swallow when you know how the story ends. His love was manifest, not just for Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, who were a whole and happy family again, but for everyone who saw and came to believe in his power over death.

But how loved did anyone feel when they didn’t know Lazarus would live again? When they felt he wouldn’t have died at all if Jesus wasn’t so long in coming?

God has shown me a lot in the last few weeks about the love he packs into his delays, and I believe every word I’ve written about it. His timing is his love in action. But my faith in that is still just that—faith. And it’s not always winning. It’s an anchor, but the storms of hopelessness still beat against the ship.

Mary and Martha must have been in a similar state. They sent for Jesus because they believed not only in his power to heal but that he loved Lazarus enough to exercise it. But when Jesus finally arrived, the reality was that Lazarus had been four days in the tomb, and the first words out of both his sisters’ mouths were a grief-stricken, “Lord, if only you had been here.”

Hard to believe he loves you when everything tangible seems to say otherwise.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t, though. Martha was faithful enough to realize that. After her anguished if only, she said, “But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.”

Am I meek enough to maintain that kind of trust when it appears my emergency wasn’t that important to him? What would I say if he finally arrived on the scene of my heartache?

I’ve imagined a few choice words through the years, and they don’t sound like Martha’s.

Curbing Anger When Your Hope is Dead

I rather envy Martha and Mary. They only had to wait four days for Jesus. If I only had to wait four days, maybe I could be as trusting as them, but I’ve been waiting—what’s four times a thousand? It’s been longer than that.

Four days seems forgivable. Four thousand days? To put that in perspective, that’s more than eight times seventy times seven.

Yeah. I feel a little indignant sometimes, and more inclined to give Jesus the cold shoulder when at last he comes than to run and meet him as though it makes no difference that he could have prevented this pain and didn’t. And if he did actually raise my hopes from the dead, I’d accept it grudgingly. “Thanks for my husband and children, but I still don’t forgive you for what you put me through.”

But I have to remind myself he’s going to bring a why when he comes. Not a, “Whoops, I forgot about you, didn’t I?” (that would be unforgivable) but a, “Let me show you what I’ve been doing.”

I have a feeling it’ll more than compensate for four times a thousand.

In the meantime, while I try to give him the benefit of the doubt as I remain uncompensated, I think he extends me some grace when impatience shrouds my faith. He didn’t tell everyone when he came to Bethany, “Stop your bawling, for heaven’s sake! Don’t you know I have this under control?” He wept with them.

He won’t do less for me. As long as I’m there to weep with.

If I am, do you know what that means? It means my hope is not dead after all.

Mostly dead, maybe. But not all dead.

“There’s a Big Difference Between Mostly Dead and All Dead”

Remember The Princess Bride? The invincible Westley, immune to Spaniards, giants, Sicilians, and iocane powder, survivor of pain to a scale of fifty? Mostly dead Westley?

Mostly dead hope looks just like him. Limp as a wet rag and barely able to wiggle its finger, but alive as long as there’s even the slightest hint of the idea of a hope to live for.

I’ve come to the conclusion that hope is unkillable.

Maybe so is the person holding onto it.

Something is dead. There’s no question of that. Otherwise, why am I standing on the outskirts of town with a broken heart, anxiously peering down the road for a Savior? It may be my hope in the tomb. It may be me. It’s probably both. But it’s not all of my hope, and it’s not all of me.

Because I’m still peering down the road.

I’ve been doing it for over four thousand days, and I feel as skeletal as what I’m waiting for him to resurrect, but if I didn’t still believe he’d come, I wouldn’t still be standing here.

For the Glory of God

I don’t know when the living, laughing person I used to be will return to the shell I feel I’ve become. Mostly dead hope can’t do much about that. Though a POW hopes for freedom, he remains subject to the rigors of prison camp until it comes. And though I hope Jesus is on his way with my why, I’m afraid I’ll still be tossed by sorrow and frustration until he gets here. The life that is goes on even while you watch for the life you hope will be.

But as Jesus told his disciples when he heard of Lazarus, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God.”

Does that phrase ever sound like nails on a chalkboard to you? For the glory of God? I admit, it’s gotten my hackles up a time or two. I know he’s God, and we are literally nothing without him. But why does everything for his glory seem to happen at my expense?

“I left you waiting for over four thousand days, but it’s okay. It’s for my glory.”

Does that sound like a loving God? It sounds like a selfish God.

Until you think about what his glory is. “For behold, this is my work and my glory–to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”

His glory is not all about him. It’s all about us. Why does he want to be honored? Because those who honor him love him. Those who love him keep his commandments, those who keep his commandments return to him, and those who return to him find eternal happiness.

So, now what does it mean if I say I’ve waited over four thousand days for God’s glory?

The more desperate the situation, the more souls might be saved when he turns it around. That’s what it means. And he will turn it around. Sometime. Somehow.

You may think your hope is as dead as Lazarus, but remember Lazarus lived again because there was always–always hope in Christ.

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.

Proverbs 13:12

Does any of this sound like your story? Leave a comment to tell me which parts you relate to. And don’t forget to pass it on to someone else whose hope might need a boost!

Scripture References

• John 11 – Story of Lazarus
• Moses 1:39

Pin It For Later