There are seasons in life when faith feels less like certainty and more like waiting. We pray for healing, but the illness remains. We pray for reconciliation, but the relationship is still broken. We pray for guidance, but the way forward remains unclear. We pray for a child or grandchild who has wandered from the faith, but nothing seems to change. In those moments, we may know what God has promised. We may believe that he is faithful. But we have not yet seen the fulfillment. That is where both Jeremiah and Martha stand in today’s readings.

Jeremiah is exhausted by his vocation. He has spoken God’s word faithfully, but instead of success he has experienced conflict, isolation, and rejection. He cries out: “Woe to me, mother, that you gave me birth!” This is not the voice of someone who has lost all faith. It is the voice of someone who has tried to remain faithful and is tired of the cost. Yet in the middle of his lament, Jeremiah says:  “When I found your words, I devoured them;  your words were my joy and the happiness of my heart.”

Jeremiah still remembers what first sustained him. God’s word had become part of him. He had not merely heard it. He had consumed it. It had nourished his heart and given meaning to his life. But now he is struggling because the word he embraced has not yet produced the outcome he hoped for. He has God’s promise, but he is still waiting for deliverance.

Martha is in a similar place. Her brother Lazarus has died. Jesus is late on the scene. She says to him: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” There is both faith and pain in that sentence. Martha believes Jesus could have helped. She trusts his power. But she is also grieving what did not happen. Her prayer was not answered in the way she expected. And yet she does not walk away. She remains in conversation with Jesus. “But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Martha does not understand what Jesus is about to do. She has no clear picture of how this story will end. She is still standing in grief. But she holds on.

Then Jesus says: “I am the resurrection and the life.” He does not explain what He is about to do, rather the first action is the gift of Himself to Martha.  That may be the deepest lesson in these readings.

While we are waiting for God’s promise to be fulfilled, God often gives us his presence before he gives us an answer. We want to know when things will change. God says, “I am with you.” We want to know how the story will end. God says, “Trust me.” We want a solution. God gives us his Word.

This does not mean that our questions are wrong or that faithful people never become discouraged. Jeremiah complains openly. Martha tells Jesus exactly how she feels. Faith is not pretending that everything is fine. Faith is bringing our disappointment to God and refusing to stop speaking with him. It is possible to grieve and still believe. It is possible to be confused and still trust. It is possible to feel tired and still hold on to God’s word.

God responds to Jeremiah with a promise: “They will fight against you, but not prevail over you, for I am with you, to deliver and rescue you.” God does not promise that Jeremiah’s struggle will disappear immediately.He promises that the struggle will not have the final word.

Jesus makes the same promise to Martha, only in an even greater way: “Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live.” Death itself will not have the final word.  This is the faith Christians are called to live.

We hold on to God’s word while waiting for God’s promise. We do not always know when healing will come. We do not always know how reconciliation will happen. We do not know when grief will become lighter or when a prayer will be answered. But we know the One who has spoken.

And in the end, Christian hope rests not in our ability to predict what God will do, but in the character of the God who has promised to remain with us. Most of the Christian life is lived somewhere between Jeremiah’s words: “Your words were my joy” and Martha’s confession: I have come to believe.”

We remember what God has said. We continue to believe.  And we wait with the quiet conviction that the Lord who has begun the story has not abandoned it.

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Image credit: The Raising of Lazarus, Duccio di Buoninsegna (c.1310), Kimberly Museum of Art, Public Domain