One moment can change everything.

A door is opened, a volcano erupts.

A door is closed, I am entombed.

Fearfully or gallantly we rise and act.

We do our best until the shockwaves dissipate.

Shakily we emerge to survey the damage.

The one spared may rejoice and thank God.

The one devastated may rail,

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Both experienced tragedy and shudder.

Each is intertwined, each is forever altered.

What reservoir can contain the icy passion

that will not soon melt or evaporate?

Can flowers emerge from hardened lava? 

Martha said, “Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died.” The flow of her heart is toward despair, but Jesus is pushing against that flow. He’s rebuking her doubt and giving her hope.

Mary says exactly the same thing, “Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died” . . . but instead of pushing against the flow of her heart’s sadness, he bursts into tears.

“Where have you laid him?” Jesus asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” John 11:17-36

“Now frankly, everybody needs a ministry of truth and a ministry of tears . . . [Jesus] is the truth itself come in tears . . . You would think if a person were really divine, he wouldn’t be that emotionally exposed, but he is.”

[Excerpted from Timothy Keller, Encounters with Jesus, (“The Grieving Sisters” pp. 43, 51).