Jesus comes looking for Lazarus, and he is not there.
Jesus knows that we will do the same.
That we will look for him among the dead.
That we will lose so many whom we love and yet will look for them.
In crowds, in our homes, in our traditions, in the places they have always been.
In the important places we go.
And there will be a deep, deep grief each time we recognize that it is not the loved one we have seen, after all.
Just the back of someone else's head, just a voice so reminiscent, just a laugh we could have sworn we'd shared.
And that deep grief doesn't have a pithy care-ism to assuage it.
It simply sits.
But we must never stop looking.
There is plenty to be seen.
Jesus knows that we will do the same.
That we will look for him among the dead.
That we will lose so many whom we love and yet will look for them.
In crowds, in our homes, in our traditions, in the places they have always been.
In the important places we go.
And there will be a deep, deep grief each time we recognize that it is not the loved one we have seen, after all.
Just the back of someone else's head, just a voice so reminiscent, just a laugh we could have sworn we'd shared.
And that deep grief doesn't have a pithy care-ism to assuage it.
It simply sits.
But we must never stop looking.
There is plenty to be seen.