the God who cries

When's the last time you cried? I mean really just drenched someone's sleeve? Lost all sense of emotional restraint and let the brokenness of your life leak out of your eyes and nose as if there wasn't room for it in your body anymore? A time you unashamedly showed someone your snot-faced, puffy-eyed humanity?

For some of you the answer might be recently. For others is might be ages and ages ago. Or if you're like me, you would doubtfully own up to ever having a time like that. But we've all had moments- whether we're prideful non-cryers, closet blubberers or over-emotional geysers- when we've come face to face with the pain we carry.

Now imagine bearing the brokenness of every creature on this earth, all at once. Imagine experiencing, in the same capacity and intimacy, the fullness of all emotional turmoil.

Is that not the task the God of Compassion faces each day? Does not He, who sees all, knows all, and feels all, undertake to lament human suffering in it's entirety?

But how does He let it out? Why do we not see tears pouring out of heaven, like a flood from the skies?

Because so great is His compassion that tears cannot contain its full expression. So great is His heartbreak that His broken heart became flesh- the very flesh pinned to wood, with tears and blood trickling down.

..."Break my heart for what breaks yours...everything I am for your Kingdom's cause."

Do we mean these words when we sing them in church? Are we really prepared to lament with Him for a world that's been groaning in agony ever since the birth of sin? Are we willing to make those groanings our own, even if that may mean suffering, and perhaps crying?

After all, "Jesus wept."And it wasn't out of self pity either. It was for the death of the one he loved. And does not He- He who calls us each beloved- mourn over our own decaying world, that He longs to restore to life, if only we will beleive? (read John 11)

I think compassion cannot be truly expressed without some tears once in a while. But let me qualify this:

1. Compassion is not merely spiritual. Sympathy and pity are the progressive response.

2. Nor is compassion tear-deep. Tears may be the flowering of if, but not it's roots. Rather than beginning as an emotional response to the hurt of another, compassion begins with a deep spiritual concern for their predicament- rooted, of course in Love. (This is something we must ask God for, as only He enables us to love).

3. The emotions arising from true compassion are not be paralyzing, but mobilizing. Our lament is rooted in Hope. It prompts us to actively bring about the healing and restoration we trust will one day be complete. Therefore, cry if you must, but don't let a pouty face keep you from celebrating the good news!

We are the clumsy jugglers of deep pain, and even deeper Joy.

...

When we realize the Compassion of God, we can stop wondering why He lets "bad things happen" in our world. We can begin to see the God that's not standing passively off in the distance, but the God that entered into human suffering, and never left. The God who's suffering and grieving and lamenting with us as He waits for us to join in his Relief effort. For poverty and misery are our own inventions, and yet God subjected himself to them, in order that we might submit to His inventions: love, joy, and peace to name a few.

When will we admit "it's not God who doesn't care; it's us"?

May we grow to care the way He does, by offering not just our souls to Him, but our hearts as well.

Because if we refuse to let our hearts be broken, they'll never be redeemed.


Come trickle down and save the world
two hands that I can't see
come breathe, come breathe,
come breathe on me.
Split-rib water, blood and bone
come now, come Calvary
come breathe, come breathe on me.

Come freedom come.
Come freedom come.
Come Freedom, come. [Jennifer Knapp]