Couldn't He Have...?

It’s hard sometimes. It’s hard to see other people rejoicing in God’s miraculous healing when you’re still stuck in that hospital bed. It’s hard to watch God bring someone’s loved ones out of danger while your own come back in coffins or not at all. It’s hard to see God reunite families and heal broken relationships when your own are so far gone with no intention of coming back. It’s hard to struggle with a mental illness day after day while others talk about having enough faith and willpower to see their own struggles disappear without a trace. And even if you're one of the friends whose own life is blessed by God in every earthly way, it's still hard because you know others are dealing with disease, pain, famine, persecution, martyrdom, death.

It’s hard, sometimes, to believe God is who He says He is when you’re doing everything right and still nothing is working.

Jesus received word once that His dear friend Lazarus was ill. He waited two days before starting on His journey to see him, and by the time He got there Lazarus had died. He wept on His way to the tomb, and some of the Jews there said, “See how He loved him!” But others said, “Couldn’t He who opened the blind man’s eyes also have kept this man from dying?”

If you’re familiar with the Bible, you know how the story ends. Jesus was able to prove His power even more than if this were just another healing of the sick, more than if He had come at the beginning or even just snapped His fingers and allowed Lazarus to be healed.

He couldn’t have done this with another request, with the Roman centurion and his servant or Jairus and his daughter. These people didn’t know Him, and they didn’t trust Him any more than any other passerby. No, He had to wait for it to be His friends, people who loved Him and trusted Him, people who knew who He truly was. Only they trusted His power enough to allow Him to do this, and only they still trusted Him as the resurrection and the life when their brother was dead.

Only the friends of God can experience this deepest sorrow and still cling to Him. Only the friends of God can endure these dark nights of the soul without dying out altogether. Only through the friends of God can God work His finest miracles and display His greatest power.

I’m not saying that those who suffer less or who experience great shows of His power are further from God, not by any means. Jairus was a Pharisee, one of the spiritual leaders of his country. The Roman centurion was declared to have faith unequaled by any in all of Israel. It wouldn’t make any sense to say that those who experience the presence of God in miraculous ways are not as close to Him as those who never do – after all, you have to be close enough to believe that God will work in order to see any miracle as His doing.

But I think there is something to be said in the fact that those who walk the closest with God often walk the longest through the valley of the shadow of death. I think there’s something to be said in that the original apostles and many founders of the early church all died as martyrs in ways that make most cringe to think about – and God didn’t send a battalion of angels to rescue them, or even one. There’s something in the fact that spiritual giants, from Charles Spurgeon to Mother Teresa, battled depression and darkness even as they accomplished great wonders for the kingdom of God. There’s something to be said in the fact that those struggling the longest struggles and fighting the hardest fights are often those doing or destined to do the greatest works for the kingdom, and the ones who will say in the end that it was all worth it.

So if your dark night lasts longer than others, if your sorrows run deeper and your cup of joy refuses to be filled, remember that God uses His friends to display His power. He will use the darkness of His friends in ways He would never use that of those who are further from Him. He is not required to give His friends special treatment; the special treatment is for those who truly want Him to use them, and so He does. Because no story which means anything goes without darkness, and the stories which drag the hero through the deepest mud are those which have the most glorious triumphs in the end.