Home Voices The Exchange Three Questions Suffering People Ask Jesus and Three Responses Jesus Gives

Three Questions Suffering People Ask Jesus and Three Responses Jesus Gives

Question 2: I’m Mad, Where Were you?

As Jesus waited another two days, Lazarus died. And sometime between him leaving and arriving, Mary and Martha buried their brother. 

As they are grieving, they hear Jesus is on his way. Martha, the older sibling (probably an 8 on the Enneagram) runs out to encounter Jesus. When she gets to Jesus, she exclaims, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” Basically, Martha tells Jesus she is angry at him. In her eyes, Jesus was [too] late.

C.S. Lewis had similar emotions when he lost his wife. He writes the following in, A Grief Observed

Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. . . . Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble.”

It is natural for us to question (to even interrogate) God’s whereabouts in the midst of our pain and suffering. In fact, it is suffering and pain that either keep or stop people from believing in God. They reason, if he can’t stop pain and suffering from happening, he must not be real. Paul Tripp notes, “The central lie of Satan to all God’s suffering children comes in the form of a question: ‘Where’s your God now?’” 

Interestingly, it doesn’t seem that Jesus is bothered by her angry interrogation. It’s ok to ask God where he is in your moment of pain and suffering. However, keep in mind that while he respectively offers us the platform to vent how we feel, we need to reciprocate and offer him the platform to respond. And respond he does.

Jesus responds to Martha by offering truth. He shares, “Your brother will rise again. . . . I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever believe in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 

In short, Jesus tells Martha that he is the resurrection—he is the eschatological future now who has come to make all things new and to turn the upside-down world back right-side up. Therefore, Jesus declares to Martha, in her pain and suffering, in her grief and loss that: 

  • He is Hope
  • He is Life
  • He is the future hope in her present reality
  • He is the One who will reverse the curse of death
  • He is the One who will right all wrongs
  • He is the One who will make all things new
  • He is the One who will destroy the sting of death
  • He is the One who will turn the world right side up