Dear friends in Christ, A few weeks ago, our gospel lesson for Sunday was the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. During our Lenten service and in my sermon on that text, we wondered about Jesus weeping. We learned that Jesus didn’t just cry a little bit, but he burst into tears, racked with grief. The grief used indicates deep, gut-wrenching sobbing. Jesus entered into the pain his loved ones were experiencing. He knew that he would raise Lazarus and bring them more joy than they would ever expect or hope for. But he didn’t dismiss their grief. He experienced it alongside them. He entered into their grief. He felt the same pain. I’ve been thinking about that so often these days as I both witness and experience the pain and suffering in our broken world. People I know and love are hurting, experiencing pain and suffering, for many reasons... some only temporary but others with no end in sight. Our prayer lists at both Bethel and Immanuel continue to grow as so many of our dear family and friends experience health concerns. Our world is full of fighting and violence—both in large-scale war and in small more personal aggressions. Our nation continues to be divided and in turmoil, which in turn has affected families and communities who find themselves on opposite sides of issues from their loved ones. There is just so much suffering. So much grief and pain and sorrow and hopelessness. In a world where people want easy answers and quick solutions to suffering. Or to at least be able to neatly dismiss it so they don’t have to deal with it or look at it. In her book, Everything Happens for a Reason And Other Lies I Have Loved, author and cancer survivor Kate Bowler tells about how when a neighbor told her husband that everything happens for a reason, he responded by saying, “I’d love to hear it.” When she didn’t understand his response, he said again that he’d love to hear the reason that his wife is dying. But of course, she had no reply. There was no reason, no explanation. There was no way to justify or dismiss his pain. There was no way to explain it or make it make sense. And that is because our loving God is a God of life; a God of irrational life-giving grace, mercy, and love. God doesn’t dole out or even just allow suffering to teach us something. Suffering and pain are a part of the brokenness of our world. It grieves God to the core of God’s being in a way that causes God to sob and weep alongside us. This is why Jesus comes to us—to hold us in the suffering we experience in this world and, through his death and resurrection, to free us and his whole precious world from all of the sin and evil and pain that want us to continue to suffer. In his death and resurrection, God’s life-giving grace, mercy, and love have the last word. In Jesus we have the promise that one day there will be no more suffering or pain or war or fighting or grief or hopelessness or… or… or… Jesus will take us home to himself and there will only be life! But until that day, Jesus is with us. Holding us. Crying with us. Loving us. This is the good news of Easter. Alleluia and Amen! Thanks be to God, Pastor Kari