Today’s Scripture John 11:32-37the day’s verse: John 11:35 (ESV)
“Jesus wept.”
John 11:35 (ESV)
Going deeper
A man sits by a hospital bed long after visiting hours. He has held it together for weeks — the phone calls, the forms, the brave face for everyone else. Then a nurse pauses, rests a hand on his shoulder, and says nothing. And that is the moment the tears finally come. Not because things got worse, but because someone finally let him not be strong.
That is close to what happens in this passage. Jesus arrives after his friend Lazarus has died. Mary meets him in her grief, and others are weeping around her. Jesus knows he is about to raise Lazarus back to life. He knows the ending. And still, standing among people he loves, the account gives us two small words: Jesus wept. He did not rush past their sorrow to the good news. He let himself feel it with them.
So if you are carrying a grief today — a loss, a disappointment, something you cannot fix — you are not being asked to hurry through it or hide it. Tears are not a failure of faith. Today, if the tears come, let them. You are in the company of One who wept too.
δακρύω
dakryō · to shed tears
This word means simply to let tears fall — the quiet, personal kind, not loud wailing. It appears only here in the whole New Testament. That a single verse holds it tells us something: God in the flesh did not stand above human sorrow, but stood inside it, tears on his own face.
Questions to sit with
- Where am I still holding a brave face when I could let the tears come?
- What would it mean for me to believe that my sorrow does not embarrass God?
- Who around me might need me simply to sit with them, without fixing anything?
A prayer
Lord, you know how much I have been holding in. Thank you that you wept, and that my tears are safe with you. Come and sit beside me in the grief I cannot fix, and let me feel that I am not alone in it.
Your tears do not push God away; they draw you into the company of One who wept.
Soli Deo Gloria — to God alone be the glory.