John 11:21

If only my circumstances and my environment were altered . . .

“If only So-and-So were not trying to live with . . .

The Hebrew of this verse literally means to “go on in the center of trouble.” What descriptive words! And once we have called on God during our time of trouble, pleaded His promise of deliverance but not received it, and continued to be oppressed by the Enemy until we are in the very thick of the battle—or the “center of trouble”—others may tell us, “Don’t bother the teacher anymore” (Luke 8:49).

When Martha said, “Lord, . . . if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21), Jesus countered her lack of hope with His greater promise, “Your brother will rise again” (John 11:23). And when we walk “in the center of trouble” and are tempted to think, like Martha, that we are past the point of ever being delivered, our Lord also answers us with a promise from His Word: “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life.”

Mary and Martha could not understand what their Lord was doing. Each of them had said to Him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (vv. 21, 32). And behind their words we seem to read their true thoughts: “Lord , we do not understand why You waited so long to come or how You could allow the man You love so much to die. We do not understand how You could allow such sorrow and suffering to devastate our lives, when Your presence might have stopped it all. Why didn’t You come? Now it’s too late, because Lazarus has been dead four days!” But Jesus simply had one great truth in answer to all of this. He said, in essence, “You may not understand, but I am telling you that if you believe , you will see.”

Abraham could not understand why God would ask him to sacrifice his son, but he trusted Him. Then he saw the Lord’ s glory when the son he loved was restored to him. Moses could not understand why God would require him to stay forty years in the wilderness, but he also trusted Him. Then he saw when God called him to lead Israel from Egyptian bondage.