Our Story Part 1: Does Delay Mean Denial?

Time spent waiting on God is never wasted.

I remember typing the words below knowing that despite our grim fertility diagnosis, the Lord could help us overcome the numerous obstacles in our path to having a family. Someone once asked me "Is there any hope for you and your husband?" Aside from strongly recommending that you NEVER ask this question to someone, my answer was an emphatic YES! Where God is concerned, and that is everywhere and in everything, I will always have hope! Because he is more than able.


FLASHBACK
January 2, 2015

When I ask God why he hasn’t given us a family yet he directs my thoughts to the death of Lazarus over and over again.  Jesus was near the Jordan river based on John chapter 10 and his friend, Lazarus, was deathly ill and in Bethany. According to Google Maps (and yes, I looked this up, the beauty of modern technology), the Jordan river is roughly a 16-17 hour walk from Bethany. For the sake of argument, let's say it was a full day journey.  Yet, when Jesus heard his dear friend was on his death bed, he didn't rush to get there. He delayed.

John 11: 1-7
Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.)  So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.  So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

When I was younger, I always struggled with this. Why would Jesus allow his friends to suffer like this when he could have easily left the Jordan river area when he heard the news that Lazarus was sick and heal him? It seems so simple and yet Jesus delayed!  Verse 4 gives the answer… the delay was to give God the glory through the intervention that was about to come later on in chapter 11.

John 11:38-44
Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance.  “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”   Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”  So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.  I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”  When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

The delay allowed for a much bigger miracle to occur and for people to see who Jesus really was.  If Jesus healed Lazarus of his illness, that would be a miracle and a great thing. But now consider Jesus raising a man from the dead who was buried for four days! Word would spread pretty quickly about this guy, don’t you think? Jesus didn’t just have dominion over disease but by delaying he exercised his power over death!  The miracle was so people would know he was, indeed, the Messiah that was promised!

Could it be that Jesus will use our infertility (aka: a 13 year delay) to carry out a much bigger miracle than if he just healed us immediately? Absolutely!  Could dire test results show how limited humans are but how nothing is impossible for God?  You bet!  Could he use this to show people in present day who he is? Yup!

Is that his plan? 

I don’t know yet.  Even so, I place my life in his care knowing I serve a God who loves me and only wants the very best for me. This gives me a tremendous amount of hope for the future despite what the doctors say and our limited resources.  He has a plan and at this point that’s all I need to know.  He will likely not answer my prayers how I expect but he also has a tendency of answering prayers beyond what we could ask for or imagine. And when he does, I’m prepared to shout it from the rooftops like I’m certain Martha and Mary did!

Matthew 19:26
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible… but with God all things are possible.”

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Stay Tuned for Part 2:  The Diagnosis
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