Life's Little Parables

As a teenager, my parents would gather us for scripture study.  Without fail, when I wasn’t in the mood to be there, my dad would ask us what our favorite scriptures were.  I, being the youngest, was generally the last one to be asked.  Many times I gave the answer, “Jesus wept.”  When asked why, my response was, “Because it is the shortest scripture!”  I’m sure my parents wanted to jerk a knot in my head, but it hurried along the discussion so I could go on to other things.

I lost my mother this a few months ago, very unexpectedly.  I felt consumed with grief.  It felt like my world had been shattered, torn apart, and destroyed.  I wept a lot.  However, my mind kept coming back to the scripture “Jesus wept”. 

What is weeping?  It isn’t just a single tear rolling down your face.  “Weeping” brings to my mind images of someone sobbing.  Why was Jesus sobbing?  He’d just found out that his friend, Lazarus, died.  He mourned the loss of his friend.  He too felt consumed with grief.

Now, if there is anyone who should understand life, death, and salvation, it is Jesus.   He understands much more than I do, yet, He sobbed when faced with the death of a loved one.  My mind began wrapping around the fact that He truly understood the grief I felt in losing my mom.  He came to suffer for each of us so he could understand our sorrows and pains so that one day we could return and live with him again.  Why did He do this?  Why did He suffer when he could have said no? 

Forgive me for a moment as I go off on what appears to be a tangent.

A few days ago, we went to lunch with my husband at a Mexican restaurant.  Our middle-aged waiter was very nice to us.  About ¾ of the way through dinner, my 3-year-old son popped up from the table, ran to the waiter, gave him a hug, looked at him with huge, innocent eyes and said, “You are my new friend and I love you!!”  I had two distinct reactions to this.  Part of me thought, “Aww, how cute!”  The other part of me thought, “Hmm, I need to teach him more about stranger danger!”  Our waiter looked a bit surprised, but smiled. After the meal, my husband took the kids to pay as I tidied up the table a bit.  Our waiter came up to me and said, “I will NEVER forget what your son told me today.  ‘You are my new friend and I love you’.  You have no idea how much that means to me!  Please come back soon.”  We hugged and off I went.

“You are my friend” and “I love you”…two of the most powerful phrases in the world.  Think about it for a minute.  Are there any other positive phrases that you can think of that carry more weight than those two?  I can’t. 

I pondered earlier why Jesus would come to earth and suffer for us.  It comes down to those two phrases, “You are my friend and I love you.”  He loves us and wants us to return to him.  He did everything in His power to ensure our return.  He said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.” (John 15:13-14)  He laid down His life for us, his friends, because He loves us!