Jesus Wept
The shortest verse in all of scripture is John 11:35. John chapter 11 is when Jesus's friend Lazarus dies and verse 35 says "Jesus wept." Now, Jesus knows the Plan of Salvation better than anyone. He wrote it after all. He also had come to the home of Lazarus specifically to raise him from the dead. And yet, He wept. He grieved. He mourned. A man near and dear to His heart had died. Christ took the sting out of death. Because of Christ's Atonement and the Plan of Salvation, we need not feel the sharp, terrifying anguish that comes from the belief that we will never see our loved ones again. But that does not mean that we will not feel the dull ache of longing, knowing that we may need to wait years or decades before we meet again. Because of Christ's Atonement and the Plan of Salvation, our hearts need not shatter, but they may still be broken for a time. John 11:35 says "Jesus wept." John 11:36 says "Then said the Jews, Behold, how he loved him." On the TV show Wanda vision, the character Vision asks "But what is grief, if not love persevering?" Love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth. Love transcends life and death and time and space. Love binds us together in a way that is far stronger than the bands of death. Our grief is proof of that. Death can't stop us from loving our loved ones. That's why it hurts so much. There is a principle in physics called quantum entanglement. You can take two elementary particles and entangle them in such a way that when you try to jostle one of them the other instantaneously moves also. This happens whether they're a foot away from each other or on the other side of the galaxy. When our hearts are knit together in love, we are entangled together such that we affect one another even from this world to the world that comes. That entanglement may feel like it's stretched to the breaking point when our grief is fresh and almost too painful to bear, but though we may weep, as Jesus did, we will find that love never faileth.
