This miraculous story begins with the following declaration: “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (v. 5). It is as if God were teaching us that at the very heart and foundation of all His dealings with us, no matter how dark and mysterious they may be, we must dare to believe in and affirm His infinite, unmerited, and unchanging love. Yet love permits pain to occur.

Mary and Martha never doubted that Jesus would quickly avert every obstacle to keep their brother from death, “yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.”

What a startling word: “Yet”! Jesus refrained from going not because He did not love them but because He did love them. It was His love alone that kept Him from hurrying at once to their beloved yet grief-stricken home. Anything less than infinite love would have rushed instantly to the relief of those beloved and troubled hearts, in an effort to end their grief, to have the blessing of wiping and stopping the flow of their tears, and to cause their sorrow and pain to flee. Only the power of divine love could have held back the spontaneity of the Savior’s tenderheartedness until the angel of pain had finished his work.

Who can estimate the great debt we owe to suffering and pain? If not for them, we would have little capacity for many of the great virtues of the Christian life. Where would our faith be if not for the trials that test it; or patience, without anything to endure or experience and without tribulations to develop it?

Loved! then the way will not be drear; For One we know is ever near, Proving it to our hearts so clear That we are loved.

Loved when our sky is clouded o’er, And days of sorrow press us sore; Still we will trust Him evermore, For we are loved.

Time, that affects all things below, Can never change the love He’ll show; The heart of Christ with love will flow, And we are loved.

Jesus does not want all His loved ones to be of one mold or color. He does not seek uniformity. He will not remove our individuality; He only seeks to glorify it. He loved “Martha and her sister and Lazarus.”

“Jesus loved Martha.” Martha is our biblical example of a practical woman; “Martha served” (John 12:2). In that place is enshrined her character.

“And her sister.” Mary was contemplative, spending long hours in deep communion with the unseen. We need the Marys as well as the Marthas—the deep contemplative souls, whose spirits shed a fragrant restfulness over the hard and busy streets. We need the souls who sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to His Word and then interpret the sweet Gospels to a tired and weary world.

“And Lazarus.” What do we know about him? Nothing! Lazarus seems to have been undistinguished and commonplace. Yet Jesus loved him. What a huge multitude come under the category of “nobodies”! Their names are on the register of births and on the register of deaths, and the space between is a great obscurity. Thank God for the commonplace people! They turn our houses into homes; they make life restful and sweet. Jesus loves the commonplace. Here then is a great, comforting thought: we are all loved—the brilliant and the commonplace, the dreamy and the practical.

“Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” Does the wildflower bloom less carefully and are the tints less perfect because it rises beside the fallen tree in the thick woods where mankind never enters? Let us not bemoan the fact that we are not great, and that the eyes of the world are not upon us.” J. H. JOWETT

Loved! then the way will not be drear, For One we know is ever near, Proving it to our hearts so clear That we are loved.

Loved when we sing the glad new song To Christ, for whom we’ve waited long, With all the happy ransomed throng— Forever loved.

Every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.—But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.

Can a woman forget her suckling child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.

Thou shalt not be forgotten of me. I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins.

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.—A woman . . . cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David! But he answered her not a word.

The trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth.