The God Who Shows Up Late
“Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.” — John 11:5–6
Has God ever felt late to something you desperately needed Him to show up for on time?
I want to show you something in Scripture that most people read right past.
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John 11:5–6 contains two sentences placed side by side that should stop us cold.
Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
Then immediately:
So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.
That word is doing everything, the word so. Because of His love not in spite of it He waited. He delayed and he let the thing get worse before He moved. By the time Jesus arrived Lazarus had been in the tomb four days. Martha came out to meet Him and said the words that every person who has ever felt God was late has felt in their chest:
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
If you had been here. She believed in His power. She knew He could have prevented it. And He hadn’t come. And she was standing in front of Him saying it out loud. Jesus did not defend His timing. He did not explain the plan. He asked to be taken to the tomb. He saw her weeping and he wept and then He raised Lazarus from the dead.
The Sermon
Here is the theological reality that the story of Lazarus says:
God’s delays are not His denials and His timing is not indifference. Jesus waited specifically because He loved them. The delay was not the absence of love it was the expression of a love that was working toward something greater than the healing Lazarus’s family had asked for. A resurrection instead of a recovery. Something that could only happen after the death that felt like abandonment.
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But here is what I do not want to skip past: they didn’t know that while they were in it.Mary and Martha sat in a house full of mourners for four days not knowing that Jesus was on His way. Not knowing that the death they were grieving was not the end of the story. Not knowing that what felt like the worst possible outcome was the exact thing the miracle required. They felt abandoned and Jesus was already moving.
That gap between what they felt and what was actually true is where most of us live most of the time. We feel abandoned and we feel like God is late. We feel like if He cared He would have moved by now. And the whole time He is already moving toward us with something we cannot yet see. The delay is not the absence of the miracle. Sometimes the delay is what the miracle requires.
The Real Word
I want to speak to the person who has been waiting on God for something that feels past the deadline. The marriage that needed Him two years ago. The healing that should have come by now. The provision that arrived later than the crisis required. The prayer that went unanswered so long you stopped praying it. You are not forgotten. You are not abandoned. You are not the exception to the love that Scripture promises.
You are in the four days. The specific, painful, feels-like-the-end four days between the death and the resurrection. And Jesus is already on His way.
He wept at Lazarus’s tomb not because He didn’t know what He was about to do but because He entered the grief of the people He loved before He resolved it. He did not skip to the miracle without first sitting in the loss.
He will do the same for you. He is already weeping with you in the four days. And He is already moving toward the tomb. Hold on, the story is not over. It is not even close to over.
A True Story
Rebecca prayed for her prodigal son for eleven years. Eleven years of the same prayer. Eleven years of watching him move further from everything she had raised him to believe. Eleven years of Christmases that felt like a reminder of the distance.
By year nine she had stopped believing he was coming back. Not stopped praying stopped believing. She went through the motions because she didn’t know what else to do with the grief. In year eleven he called. Something had shifted. He didn’t know why. He just said: Mom I think I need to come home.
She said: I was in the four days for eleven years. I didn’t know Jesus was already on the way. But He was. He was moving the entire time I thought He wasn’t there.
Reflection Questions
Where in your life do you feel like God showed up late or hasn’t shown up yet? Write about it specifically.
What is the difference between God being absent and God being on His way? How does the story of Lazarus change how you hold your current waiting?
Write a prayer that is honest about the delay not the cleaned up version, the real one.
Today’s Prayer:Lord I have felt like You were late. I have sat in the four days not knowing You were already moving. Today I am bringing You the specific grief of the waiting the years of it, the cost of it, the faith it has tested. I trust that Your delays are not Your denials. I trust that You are already on the way. Help me hold on until the tomb opens. And weep with me in the in-between the way You wept with Mary and Martha present in the grief before You resolved it. I am still here. I am still Yours. Come, Lord. Amen.
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