I'm an introvert who cries at commercials. Insurance commercials. Dog food commercials. Once, a mattress commercial got me. Nobody has ever explained why a mattress sale should require tissues, but there I sat, sniffling on the couch like a woman with a deep, personal connection to memory foam (which, actually, I am).
Over the years, I've gotten the message loud and clear that this is a problem.
"Toughen up."
"Don't be so sensitive."
"It's not that big a deal."
I've even said it to myself in the mirror: Pull it together, Dana. Nobody wants a leaky redhead.
So when I recently read John 11, it stopped me cold. Let me set the scene because it's one of the most dramatic in the Bible.
Lazarus is sick. His sisters, Mary and Martha, send word to Jesus with one of Scripture's most tender messages: "Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick" (John 11:3). They don't even ask for anything; they just state the facts and trust His heart to do the math.
Then comes the part that makes my stomach flip. "Now Jesus loved Martha, and his sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was" (John 11:5-6).
Did you catch the "therefore"? He loved them; therefore, He stayed put. Two whole days. If you've ever sat by a phone, a hospital bed, or a mailbox, waiting for God to show up, you know exactly how those two days felt.
Lazarus dies. By the time Jesus arrives, he has been in the tomb four days. Martha meets Him on the road with words I suspect many of us have whispered into a pillow: "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died" (John 11:21). Translation: Where were You? You're too late.
Then Jesus reaches the tomb. A stone blocks the entrance—big, heavy, and final. To everyone standing there, that stone said one thing: It's over. Mourners are wailing. Mary is on the ground. But here's the detail that undoes me: Jesus knew.
He knew exactly what He was about to do. In a matter of minutes, a dead man would walk out of that cave wearing his burial clothes. If any person in history had a reason to say, "Dry your eyes, everybody, you're going to love this part!" it was Jesus.
But He didn't.
"When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled" (John 11:33).
And then the shortest verse in the Bible, which might be the biggest: "Jesus wept" (John 11:35).
The One who spoke galaxies into existence stood in the dirt and cried.
What This Means for the Tender-Hearted
Let me say something to every deep feeler reading this, the ones who've been told they're "too much."
Look at the order of events. Jesus did not fix first and feel later. He felt first. He walked into the pain before He walked past it. The miracle was coming, but He did not treat their tears as an obstacle between Him and the main event. In that moment, their tears were the event.
Your emotions are not a malfunction. Jesus, Who is perfect and has never had a hormonal spiral or a dreadful night's sleep, was visibly and deeply moved. John recorded it. The Holy Spirit deemed it important enough to preserve for over two thousand years that God, in the flesh, groaned and wept. If tears were weakness, the Gospel wouldn't attribute them to Jesus.
Here's something I love, too. Greek has more than one word for crying, and John uses them on purpose. The crowd's weeping is the loud, open wailing of a funeral. But the word for Jesus' tears is used nowhere else in the New Testament, and it pictures tears slipping quietly down the face. He didn't perform. He didn't match the crowd's volume. His grief was personal and real. Some of us cry in the middle of a room, and some of us cry silently in the car. Jesus honors both.
Then there's the groaning. That word is strong. It carries the sense of indignation, the snort a warhorse makes. Jesus was not only sad. He was fiercely against what sin and death had done to the people He loved. Death was never part of the original plan, and He was angry about it. So the next time you feel gutted by a diagnosis, a loss, a betrayal, or a broken world, remember that your heartache is not out of step with God's heart. It is in step with it.
And consider this: God doesn't just notice our tears. He keeps them. "Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?" (Psalm 56:8). Not one is wasted or filed under "overreaction." Each is counted, collected, and written down.
What This Means for the Waiting
Now, back to those two days. If you're in a season where heaven seems silent, John 11 tells you something vital: delay isn't denial, and silence isn't absence.
Jesus' waiting was wrapped in love ("Now Jesus loved..."), not indifference. He had something bigger planned than healing at the bedside. He planned a resurrection. But notice that He didn't ask Mary and Martha to pretend they weren't hurting while they waited. He met them in the ache.
Hebrews 4:15 says, "For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities."
Touched with the feeling. He isn't a distant Manager watching from a corner office with a clipboard and a timeline. He's a Savior who gets down in the dirt next to you.
I live with anxiety, depression, and chronic illness. Some days, the stone in front of my tomb feels enormous. And I used to think the Christian response was to quickly slap a smile on my face and a Bible verse over the pain and move on. But Jesus never did that to Mary. He stayed with her in her sorrow, and then He said, "Take ye away the stone" (John 11:39).
Here's the beautiful thing about that command. Jesus, who could raise the dead, asked people to roll away a stone. He invites us to participate. Sometimes our part is small: showing up, obeying the next instruction, trusting just a little. He does the impossible. We move the rock.
And when the stone rolled away, He called a name. "Lazarus, come forth" (John 11:43). The man walked out still wrapped in grave clothes, and Jesus said, "Loose him, and let him go" (John 11:44). He doesn't just rescue. He unbinds.
What This Means For Today
If you're weeping today, you're in good company. The Son of God has stood where you're standing.
"The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart" (Psalm 34:18).
He's not rolling His eyes at your tears or checking His watch. He's near. He knows the ending. And He loves you far too much to rush you past the hurt on the way to the miracle.
So cry at the mattress commercial. Cry in the car. Cry in the waiting. Your Savior understands and is likely crying alongside you.
🔍 PULLING BACK THE CURTAIN: A Peek at the Study Behind This Post
This devotion started with one tiny, nagging question: Why would Jesus cry over a funeral when He was about to cancel it? My author-brain thought that sounded like a plot hole, so I went digging.
1. Start with a "wait, what?" observation. I read John 11 slowly and noticed that Jesus knew the outcome (verse 11, verse 15) yet still wept (verse 35). I jotted the question in the margin and underlined it twice.
2. Read the lead-up, not just the famous verse. Verse 5 says Jesus loved them, and verse 6 starts with "therefore," so He stayed two days. I asked, "What's the 'therefore' doing there?" Commentators agree the delay flowed from love, not despite it. That turned a verse about tears into a verse about waiting.
3. Hunt the Greek. I looked up "groaned" in verse 33 (embrimaomai) in a Bible dictionary and word-study site. I expected "sad." Instead, the word carries indignation, like a horse snorting. Rabbit trail: the same word shows up in Mark 1:43 and John 11:38. Then I compared the words for crying. Mary and the crowd "weep" with klaiō (loud wailing), while Jesus' "wept" in verse 35 is dakruō, which appears only here in the New Testament. Treasure!
4. Cross-reference for the heart behind it. I searched "tears" and "broken heart" in the KJV and landed on Psalm 56:8 (God bottles our tears), Psalm 34:18, and Hebrews 4:15 ("touched with the feeling of our infirmities"). Together they said the same thing: God doesn't just see pain; He feels it.
5. Let the application crystallize. It clicked on verse 39. Jesus feels first, then says, "Take ye away the stone." Feelings first, fix second. That is permission for every deep feeler, and a challenge for anybody who rushes people past grief.
⏱ Time note: About two hours over two mornings, plus one tea refill and one unplanned detour into Greek verb tenses. (No regrets.)
Your turn! Pick a verse that makes you go, " Wait, why?" and dig in. Read the verses on either side, look up one keyword, and follow one cross-reference. You don't need a seminary degree, just a curious heart and your Bible. Grab your shovel. The treasure's right there in the text.