“When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Two verses over from this one is the shortest verse in the Bible: Jesus wept. Here, we are told He was deeply moved and greatly troubled. Basically, Jesus was really emotional. This provides fodder for some theological pondering, which is fine, but it should also be really encouraging for us. Here’s why. Read the rest…
“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?'” (ESV – Read the chapter)
This verse has long been really encouraging to me during times of loss. We have to be careful crafting doctrines from a single verse, but the picture John paints here seems to suggest pretty clearly (especially when paired with Jesus’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16) that those who have died before us are in some sense aware of what is happening here on earth. They may be dead and gone, but they are still somehow able to see and know what’s going on here. Read the rest…
“For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
One of the phrases people sometimes use in a moment of exasperation is, “Good grief!” Charlie Brown is particularly famous for saying this. But, if you’re at all like me, you’ve always kind of wondered at this phrase because grief isn’t good. Right? No one wants to grieve and when we are it means something has gone wrong, doesn’t it? Well…not necessarily. Read the rest…
The Nexus 