TO MARY, THE SISTER OF LAZARUS
[p. 218] TO MARY, THE SISTER OF LAZARUS
Deep sorrow and desolation confine you to your house. Friends may gather there and ‘comfort’ you, but the scene and retirement suits you; real sorrow likes and clings to associations which minister to it, therefore, like Mary, you “sat still in the house”. (John 11: 20) But while you are there it is your sorrow only which occupies you; your sorrow is your greatest thought, and your friends who comfort you only comfort you respecting your sorrow. No greater thing engages you; your sorrow is not relieved though you may be comforted. The sorrow is still the circle of your thoughts, and the comfort is only in connection with it. Nothing greater than the sorrow engages you. We never can have relief from anything which interests us, but by something greater than itself, and what is more interesting, even comforting, to sorrow than to minister to it, and according to its depth this is so. One seems never to get enough of it. The terrible blank is bitter, endured the more the desolations on account of it are reviewed by the soul. Like cures like in that sense.
Nothing soothes this terrible wrench but the view of the consequences of it. The heart craves to see, though hardly with strength to endure seeing it. Yet it says, ‘Let me see it and survey, though I die in seeing it. I will know the worst, for now the worst suits me best’.
But this is all in the house while the sorrow is the controlling interest. But hear! “The Master is come, and calleth for thee”. (John 11: 28) Can you stay any longer in the house now? Your friends may think that if you leave the house you are only going to the grave to weep there. What your heart clings to they naturally connect together - your house, your own circle, and the grave, for one is your sorrow, and so it is, the widowed heart can only pass from itself to the grave.
But a new interest is awakening, “The Master is come, and calleth for thee”. (John 11: 28) This was something [p. 219] greater than the sorrow, and you arise hastily, and now your heart learns what He is to you in your sorrow. Before only the sorrow occupied you, and it was assuaged by ministering to itself, now you are with Him whom your soul knows has power to restore all in the blessedness and eternity of His own life. Do you see His tears for you? “Jesus wept”. (John 11: 35) You would never have known that in the house; you must come out to Him or you will never know this. Your friends comfort you in your sorrow, He comforts you in His sympathy, which will do for you all that He would do for Himself in your circumstances.
Oh! your heart is bereaved; you want Lazarus; then you must stay with your Lord and walk with Him to the resurrection. Do not go back to your house - go to the grave with Him, and the light of the resurrection will stream in when the darkness is thickest, at the very grave. But you are with your Lord, with the One who knows and enters into your bereavement beyond all others, and this you cannot know unless you are in company with Him, walking with Him, beside Him, learning His sympathy for you, and realising in yourself that He is beside, leading you to that bright hour when He shall establish to you the witness of His love. And if you learn Him here, and as the light of the resurrection by Him breaks in on your soul, so will your response to Him partake of the very precious ointment which will fill the house with its odour. That your soul may readily and fully enter all this blessing is my constant prayer.