It’s breakfast time and Jaden, my then-6-year-old, looks up at me, woebegone.
“Mummy, are you going to die?”
“No Jadie, my body will die, but I’ll get a new one (there is a God), and my spirit will never die.”
“No, I mean your body Mummy.”
“Yes Jadie, my body will die someday.”
Crestfallen, “That makes me very sad, because I don’t know my way around the world yet.”

A lot of days I feel like that. A little lost. Fragile and uncertain. Unstuck by Groundhog Day reruns of my heart’s battles; others’ too.

I’m at the petrol station, when perfection -in- a -pinafore catches my eye: a little mite clambering into her mum’s car. Scar-less innocence.  Until. She’s told her first lie. Hides her first hurt. Fakes her first smile.
Stay beauty. Stay. 
But it doesn’t. 
At some point, we all take the red pill and learn how deep the rabbit hole goes.
And despite all we’ve achieved, all our aggrandizing growth, we can’t fix that. The heart part. The hurt part.  The ache described in Schumann’s  Mein Herz ist Schwer – “My soul is dark…. for it hath been by sorrow nurst and ached in sleepless silence.”
 When my son Jaden was about 4 years old, we were looking at a map of the Canadian states together.   Unsettled, he stroked the fractured image with his little hand. “Mummy, it broke.” 
We did.  And all the genome mapping in the world won’t heal us.

Is the hurt a hint? The beauty meant to stay. The desire supposed to consume, but not enslave.

I go looking for how You did it –
 handled Your temptations;  Yours and others’ pain.
I find you.  Praying in the wilderness.
 And when they come to fetch you, with a,  ‘Lord, the one You love is sick’, Your response perplexes me. 
 ‘Jesus loved Lazarus… when he heard that Lazarus was ill…. he stayed two days longer where He was.’
 Why?
When you do go, he’s 4 days dead. Unperturbed, You tell Martha that Lazarus will rise again. She seems to brush You off, “Yes, yes Lord, I know. One day.”
But You didn’t mean that.
After dinner, when I say to my kids, “I’ve kept some ice cream for you”, I don’t mean they must climb into the freezer to get it. Rather, I’ll bring it to them, from where it’s safely stored.
You spell it out for her:  “No, you don’t have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life.”
You seem so collected.
I’m here.  And with Me, my Kingdom of powerful, creative and restorative love has arrived. I’ve come to end all endings.

Which makes what happens next, so unexpected. Mary arrives weeping, and there’s a shift in You.  Our English translation  –  “deeply moved”-  doesn’t come close. John describes Your reaction with the  same Greek word used to describe a warhorse on the battlefield –  the snorting of a stallion about to charge the enemy. An aggressor. You’re angry. Very. 
My children- orphaned. Sex- twisted. Freedom- lost. Hope -torn.

And then You catch me off guard again. ( I suppose if I had You sussed, You wouldn’t have much God cred.) You burst into tears.  (A word used nowhere else in the New Testament)
Again- why? 
You knew you were about to raise him. If I was about to Harry Houdini my friend to life, I certainly wouldn’t have cried.

I think E.E. Cummings nails it.
“here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope, or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)”
You wept with Mary.   And for all  the lost beauty only You can see.

And, for You.
   Is it OK to say that? That  you wept for what was  coming for You, too?
The man in You, crucified. The Son in You, forsaken.  The Holy of Holies –desecrated. 
And I think I finally get why You waited before going to Lazarus. (Well, as much as little me, gets Big You). They’d just tried to kill You- twice. Going to Lazarus is the trip You won’t come back from.  Through a thousand hints You’d been showing, that sharing our fate,  was the only way to save us from it. 
Evil would do its utmost, and You’d let it. 

At last, You’re at the tomb.
And, full of fury and tears,  You  – beautiful God-filled man, man-filled God – move against death, and bring our inheritance crashing into the now.
 “Lazarus. Come out!”
There he is.
Dead man walking.

Until THAT day
…..when all sadness will be made untrue.
……when love won’t leave, and beauty won’t fade.

Show me Your way around the world. 
In the secret place- may I be filled, fuelled. Heaven and earth joining in You, overflowing  me.
And, oh Jesus, Your roar. May I not be cowed. Or blinded. May I see the darkness, even when it’s dressed up.
In the hurting place-   carrying the weight of the heart next to mine. 
All the ways that can be, Your Kingdom come through me.
And he. And she.

My friend Eric tells  the story of his journey to Brazil, with his wife Holly, to adopt 2 sisters with Down Syndrome. Initially, the authorities were convinced they were organ traffickers, and interrogated them for hours. Finally, they were permitted to appeal their case in court.
 “Why are you doing this?” the flummoxed judge asked Eric, “Why on earth do you want these children?”
 Eric stood up.
Simply, with tears unseen, and a roar unheard, he replied,
“We want to give our lives, so that they may have life.”
A year later, the same judge called Eric and said, “I’ve got another one for you to save”.

He is – right now – Resurrection and Life.
Come out.