| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 8 |
Page 4 |
Another element of comfort for these sorrowing sisters was in the sympathy of Jesus. There was a wonderful gentleness in His manner as He received first one and then the other. Mary’s grief was deeper than Martha’s, and when Jesus saw her weeping He groaned in the spirit and was troubled. Then, in the shortest verse in the Bible, we have a window into the very heart of the Master, and we find there the most wonderful sympathy.
“Jesus wept.” It is a great comfort in time of sorrow to have even human sympathy, to know that somebody cares, that someone feels with us. It would have added something – very much indeed – of comfort for the sisters, if John, or Peter, or James, had wept with them beside their brother’s grave. But the tears of the Master meant incalculably more. They told of the holiest sympathy this world ever saw – the Son of God weeping with two sisters in a great human sorrow.
This shortest verse in the Bible was not written merely as a fragment of the narrative – it contains a revealing of the heart of Jesus for all time. Wherever a believer in Christ is sorrowing, One stands by, unseen, who shares the grief. There is immeasurable comfort in the revealing that the Son of God suffers with us in our suffering, is afflicted in all our affliction, and is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. We can endure our trouble more quietly when we know this.
There is yet another feature in the manner of Christ’s comforting His friends which are suggestive. Too often human sympathy is nothing but a sentiment. Our friends weep with us and then pass by on the other side. They tell us they are sorry for us, yet they do nothing to help us. But the sympathy of Jesus at Bethany was very practical. Not only did He reveal His affection for His friends in coming all the way from Peraea, to be with them in their trouble; not only did He show His love by speaking to them words of divine comfort, which have made a shining track through the world ever since; not only did He weep with them in their grief, but He also wrought the greatest of all His miracles to restore to them their heart’s joy.
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