It’s only two words long. Just five syllables. Yet it’s the most tender moment in all of Scripture: Jesus wept.
Not preached. Not healed. Not taught, multiplied, or overturned. He wept.
Jesus, the Son of God, unshackled by time and flesh, paused beside a grave and let tears fall. And not silent, noble ones either. The word implies sobbing—His chest likely quivering, His shoulders shaking. The kind of ugly cry we try to avoid in public.
Why? Because His friend Lazarus had died. And maybe more than that—because Mary was crying too.
John 11:35, the shortest verse in the Bible, reveals one of the deepest truths about Jesus: that He carries our sorrow not from a safe distance, but from beside us, beneath its weight.
He wasn’t crying because He didn’t know how the story would end. Minutes later, He’d call Lazarus from the tomb. He’d dry every tear around Him with a miracle. Yet still… He cried first.
I don’t know about you, but that undoes me.
There are times when Scripture reminds us of God’s power. The parted sea. The stilled storm. The risen dead. But then there are the moments when it whispers, He gets you. Hebrews 4:15 promises us, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.”
He understands the ache of grief.
He knows what it's like to arrive too late, to see a loved one buried, to feel the tension between divine purpose and human pain.
Maybe you’ve felt that too—when the prayers stay unanswered, and the phone doesn’t ring, and you sit among the bottles of medicine or the leftovers from a relationship that used to be alive. Maybe tears are your only prayer anymore. And you silently wonder: Does He care?
Yes. Jesus wept.
Not because He was helpless. Because He was human. And like Isaiah 53:3 says, He was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.”
You can’t fake that kind of compassion. You don’t learn it in seminary or draw it down from a throne. You live it. You wear it like a woolen coat in summer—the sweat of suffering dripping behind closed doors. Jesus didn’t just wear grief; He let it soak through His skin.
And maybe that’s why His tears mean more than a thousand sermons. Because they weren’t performative. They were personal. Real tears, for real pain, for real people He loved.
We live in an age that doesn’t know what to do with sorrow. We hide it behind filtered smiles and success stories. But Jesus—the perfect Son of God—allows space for the messy, cracked-open grief that we’d rather avoid. He dignifies it.
And more than that?
He enters it.
That’s the part we often miss in the Lazarus story. He doesn’t rush to the resurrection. He lingers in the ache. He comforts before He conquers. He cries before He calls the dead to life.
If it weren’t written in ink, I think I might doubt it.
But it is. And maybe it’s there—nestled between complex doctrines and miraculous signs—so we’d never, ever forget:
Your tears are not wasted. Your sorrow is not unseen.
When you sit in the aftermath of loss, when you crawl out of bed but can’t face the day, when you just want someone to see you—Jesus does.
Not just from heaven. From next to you.
I’ve sat with friends in hospital corridors. I’ve stood at gravesides. Words fail in moments like that. But perhaps the most Christlike thing we can offer is what He did: to weep with those who weep.
Because that’s who He is.
Not just the Savior on the cross. But the Friend who wept before the miracle.
It’s only two words long. Just five syllables. Yet it’s the most tender moment in all of Scripture: Jesus wept.
Not preached. Not healed. Not taught, multiplied, or overturned. He wept.
Jesus, the Son of God, unshackled by time and flesh, paused beside a grave and let tears fall. And not silent, noble ones either. The word implies sobbing—His chest likely quivering, His shoulders shaking. The kind of ugly cry we try to avoid in public.
Why? Because His friend Lazarus had died. And maybe more than that—because Mary was crying too.
John 11:35, the shortest verse in the Bible, reveals one of the deepest truths about Jesus: that He carries our sorrow not from a safe distance, but from beside us, beneath its weight.
He wasn’t crying because He didn’t know how the story would end. Minutes later, He’d call Lazarus from the tomb. He’d dry every tear around Him with a miracle. Yet still… He cried first.
I don’t know about you, but that undoes me.
There are times when Scripture reminds us of God’s power. The parted sea. The stilled storm. The risen dead. But then there are the moments when it whispers, He gets you. Hebrews 4:15 promises us, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.”
He understands the ache of grief.
He knows what it's like to arrive too late, to see a loved one buried, to feel the tension between divine purpose and human pain.
Maybe you’ve felt that too—when the prayers stay unanswered, and the phone doesn’t ring, and you sit among the bottles of medicine or the leftovers from a relationship that used to be alive. Maybe tears are your only prayer anymore. And you silently wonder: Does He care?
Yes. Jesus wept.
Not because He was helpless. Because He was human. And like Isaiah 53:3 says, He was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.”
You can’t fake that kind of compassion. You don’t learn it in seminary or draw it down from a throne. You live it. You wear it like a woolen coat in summer—the sweat of suffering dripping behind closed doors. Jesus didn’t just wear grief; He let it soak through His skin.
And maybe that’s why His tears mean more than a thousand sermons. Because they weren’t performative. They were personal. Real tears, for real pain, for real people He loved.
We live in an age that doesn’t know what to do with sorrow. We hide it behind filtered smiles and success stories. But Jesus—the perfect Son of God—allows space for the messy, cracked-open grief that we’d rather avoid. He dignifies it.
And more than that?
He enters it.
That’s the part we often miss in the Lazarus story. He doesn’t rush to the resurrection. He lingers in the ache. He comforts before He conquers. He cries before He calls the dead to life.
If it weren’t written in ink, I think I might doubt it.
But it is. And maybe it’s there—nestled between complex doctrines and miraculous signs—so we’d never, ever forget:
Your tears are not wasted. Your sorrow is not unseen.
When you sit in the aftermath of loss, when you crawl out of bed but can’t face the day, when you just want someone to see you—Jesus does.
Not just from heaven. From next to you.
I’ve sat with friends in hospital corridors. I’ve stood at gravesides. Words fail in moments like that. But perhaps the most Christlike thing we can offer is what He did: to weep with those who weep.
Because that’s who He is.
Not just the Savior on the cross. But the Friend who wept before the miracle.
