"When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby."
John 11:4
This is an interesting verse that, to me, seems to pull the reader out of the narrative and force them to see the constructed nature of the world. To be clear, I am not at all saying that this event didn't actually happen... I firmly believe that it did. Just, like the incident where Christ told Peter to catch a certain fish to obtain a peice of money, or told his disciples where to go to borrow a donkey, this is an event that shows us that someone is controlling things behind the scenes.
That doesn't make our lives meaningless or our pain proof that God wants to see us suffer--I think what it does mean is what God and the prophets have been telling us all along: that this life is a time to prepare to meet God, a temporary time we are blessedly give us to learn where we can enjoy mercy rather than suffer immediate and dire consequences for our sins... a trial, a test, a short life between eternities, where we can learn to choose, to adjust to having a body, to learn to choose for ourselves and to understand the difference between good and evil.
Christ tells us here that the sickness wasn't one that would normally kill someone, but because God wanted to show the people (and everyone through the scriptures) a miracle, it became lethal. Christ knew exactly what was going on the whole time, and delayed to make the whole scene perfect. ... And yet, when he gets there and meets Mary and Martha, and knows how much they suffered, and when he is in the situation as a family friend, it does affect him emotionally. He cries. He feels and knows the reality of it in the moment, even though he knows God is directing all of it, and also knows that he he will one day transcend his own life. It *is* all real... but it is also all temporary and in some ways artificial in the sense that it is created, not naturally occurring. But isn't that what we have been told since Genesis?
Today, let's try to understand the reality of the creation and God as the director of our lives. Let's take seriously the idea that everything around us is designed for our experience and will eventually turn to our good as we meet those experiences with faith and trust in the Lord. Let's not give up on life or other people as fake, because they aren't at all... but let's understand in a real way that what God asks is the most important part of all of this. We need to learn, and become, and prepare. That's the point of all of it.
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