153. He's Going To Seem Harsh Sometimes

John 11:3

Sometimes people who talk about Jesus don’t give you the full picture of what He’s like. They portray Jesus in a way that only deals with His sweetness and kindness. (And He was sweet and kind - but there’s more to see when you really look closely) If your image of Jesus is someone who is constantly sugary-sweet, who only ever encourages you and is always smiles and pop songs and bunny rabbits, you may need to take another look. You see, Jesus was surprising. He was unpredictable. Jesus was sometimes infuriatingly confusing. For instance, one time two sisters sent for Jesus because their brother was really sick. Now, Jesus loved this brother of theirs, and He was able to heal, so obviously Jesus would show up and heal the brother, right? Wrong. They waited day after day, but not only did Jesus fail to show up, but He didn’t even write them back to explain Himself, and eventually, their brother died. Can you imagine that? It must have seemed extremely harsh to those sisters. Sometimes Jesus won’t answer your prayer in the way you thought He would. Sometimes He may even seem downright harsh. Why is He like this? To tell you the truth, I don’t really know. Maybe He just wants us to trust in Him even when He seems harsh. Maybe He wants us to believe that there are things going on we can’t understand. Maybe He wants us to love Him, even when we feel confused and slighted by Him. In the end, He showed up and raised Lazarus from the dead. He’s going to make everything right in the end. Our job is simply to trust Him, even when that’s hard to believe.