too Late!

by Joel Bates

Some babies are notably born too early, raising alarm in parents and hospital staff alike, but as the birth of our fifth child, Lydia Joy, approached last month, my heart sank when I thought she was coming too late.
 
Let me rewind.  A few months earlier in a prayer time, I sensed the Lord leading me to be a facilitator for one of our most powerful ministry events, the college wilderness challenge expedition.  This message from the Lord felt noteworthy because I’ve been moving into a more administrative role with Discovery Ministries and increasingly leaving the trip leading up to the younger instructors.  In addition to my age, my bigger problem in leading the trip was that the baby’s due date was only a week ahead of the expedition’s departure date.  So, I did two things: I called for backup, and I kept my heart tuned to the Lord’s direction.
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As the due date approached, my wife and I became more and more convinced that this baby would emerge early, allowing me to feel better about leading the expedition.  However, the baby didn’t come early.  In fact, her due date came and went, and my confidence that I should go on the trip faltered.  Others could lead the trip, so I shouldn’t have felt pressure to go.  However, the Lord’s invitation to go remained constant, resulting in my strong desire to be the expedition facilitator.  With four days remaining until the expedition began, I decided to put off the decision.

How could I possibly think of going now?  One day remained before the group arrived, and our baby girl still wasn’t born.  Neither had the prompting of the Lord to carry out His mission diminished.  I desperately desired to be in two places at once.  I felt so sure God had wanted me on this trip.  Yet, the baby was too late, and I knew I could never abandon my wife at such a pivotal time, let alone miss out on the joy of bringing a new child into the world. 

Too late…was God too late?  I’ve heard the phrase over and over again that “God is never late, but He’s seldom early.”  As I opened my Bible the week my daughter came too late, I found the answer.  John 11 tells the incredible story of Jesus healing Lazarus, but this story is more than just a powerful miracle done to bring about a happy conclusion.  This story is downright alarming.
 
When Lazarus’ family sends for Jesus, they despair of any remedy from doctors, medicine, or a bowl of chicken noodle soup.  No, Lazarus is deathly ill.  Jesus is the answer, but He is in a different region of Palestine.

When Jesus receives word of his friend’s plight, He does not pack for the journey, wrap up his business there, or even show concern.  In fact, He deliberately remains in that place for a few more days.  The disciples want to go now.  Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary, want Jesus to hurry to them.  Everyone seems to think Jesus should move quickly on this.  Lazarus is running out of time.

Why does Jesus linger?  It looks for all the world like He is uncaring and indifferent.  If we didn’t know how the story ends, we might conclude this Messiah is a fake. 

In His own time, Jesus arrives in Bethany far too late.  Lazarus is dead, has been dead for quite some time.  Hope is lost.  Even when Jesus utters one of the most powerful statements in all of human history, Martha lacks faith.  “I am the resurrection and the life!” He whispers gently to this weeping woman.
 
“I know you will raise him, later,” she sobs.  “But if you had only been here before it was too late.” She implies that Jesus then could have done something to save her brother.  Now Jesus has simply missed it.

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She’s right.  He is too late.  He is too late to spare Lazarus the literal suffering from his illness and too late to spare the sisters, Martha and Mary, from the hollow depth of grief and despair that one feels at the premature loss of a kindred loved one.  He is too late to show the people of Bethany, this little suburb on the heights outside the city of Jerusalem, just how much He cares for hurting, needy, dying people.  Some Messiah He is...can’t even show up on time. No one wants a Savior that’s too late!

Then, the shortest verse in all the Bible records, “He wept.”   Jesus did something so compassionate, so human, so divine.  But, why does He weep?  Is it because of his human limitations—the reality that while confined to a body, He can’t be two places at one time?  No, for He had deliberately lingered.  Is it because He himself wonders in that moment if He and the Father truly have enough power to not just heal but to resurrect?  Is it because all the people see Him as the tardy Savior, overdue for one of the greatest appointments of his career?  No!  He weeps because He can relate to all our sorrows, feel the same pain we experience, is affected by his Godly sense of compassion, and is saddened by the sorrow and suffering that death causes.  Remember, Lazarus is his friend too.  But He is not grieved because He is too late.
 
“Unroll the stone!” He declares, delivering a strange message which foreshadows his own coming experience.  Martha, ever the practical one, balks, “But Lord, there will be a bad odor for he’s been there four days.”  Again, the message is clear, you are too late God! 

Nevertheless, they roll back the stone, and the power of the tardy Messiah’s voice resounds off the walls of the inner tomb, “Lazarus, COME FORTH!” 

Then the man—the friend of Jesus, the one too far gone after the buzzer had sounded to end his game—Lazarus obeys and comes forth still wrapped in his death linens.

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This story both inspires and frightens me.  I’m inspired that nothing is too difficult for Jesus.  I’m scared because my confinement to time and space causes me to see things through those limitations.  There is an order.  Things have a time limit and an expiration date and a point of no return.  I am used these parameters, living with and accepting them.  As a result, I sometimes feel like Jesus is late.
 
This view brings me back to the day after our daughter Lydia was born—the day of the expedition.  I had accepted it was too late for me to even consider going, but when my wife, kids, and coworkers circled around me for prayer and sensed the Lord saying go and when my wife squeezed my arm and lovingly reminded me this was what I was made to do, I remembered again that Jesus does not operate on our timescale.  I think He waited until Lazarus was dead and gone to prove one last important point to mankind:  We serve the all-powerful God that is not even thwarted when He’s “too late.”

You may feel circumstances in your life make everything too far gone, too late to start again, over and done.  Relationships lost, careers stalled out, failures that have brought ruin—these situations are not too difficult for Jesus.  After all, He’s the God of power…even over being too late.

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