Yesterday, my wife cried– Billy Graham had just died, and knowing the truth about God and sin did not alter the sadness that invaded her life. In fact, I asked my students today about the last time they cried and the basis for their tears. The answers I received were not surprising but revealing, as it confirmed what most of us know; that crying is universal to our race and not limited to older adults and small children– college students cry.
I can’t tell you the exact number of times I have cried. I conduct funerals regularly and owe a certain dignity to the occasion, but I often cry as I contemplate what that individual meant to me, our family or our church. I cry when our kids all must go home following their twice yearly visit. They are likely eager to escape the hovering parents that envelope their stay; we just like who they have become as adults. Actually, me, the feeling is one of sorrow– that the relationship we once shared during their formative years has changed, not for the worse, but it has changed, and a part of me selfishly wants to return to the past where our world was ordered with their place in our home. I also cry because I miss their adult fellowship– the camaraderie of shared convictions about the Scriptures, the culture, our closeness to Jesus Christ, and the former days of backpacking. (Yes, backpacking is spiritual. 🙂 )
So, why do we cry? It seems to me, we cry when we lose something we value. Over the course of more than twenty-five years of ministry, I have watched people cry after losing their homes to fire and the children of their lives to sudden death. It matters not whether the child has reached his sixth birthday or his twenty first- the hurt is unbearable. We cry when we are hurt by a spouse, a parent, or a friend. I have very intense memories of encountering my mother sitting at our kitchen table, weeping after her childhood friend of 40 years unloaded an unfair rebuke on her; blaming her for my reluctance to share more time with her son, whose life was in full retreat from God. And so it is in the Scripture. One of King David’s worst experiences in life came from a sudden denunciation delivered not from an enemy for which he enjoyed no relationship but from a friend who had shared his most personal moments. And then the tears often come…
We cry when we are facing an uncertain future with the blessings of the past and present still fresh upon our minds. Luke describes in painful detail the Apostle Paul’s final meeting with the church at Ephesus, knowing only that he was bound for Jerusalem and with that, surrendering the relationship with the elders and people who had meant so much to him. They listened intently as he described the challenges they would face, the commitment he had shared with them, and the difficulty of leaving the circle of fellowship he had enjoyed with them. (Acts 20: 17-38) And then, after they had prayed together, they wept– cried their eyes out might be an acceptable rendering.
And yet, life is filled with tears of joy. Consider the joy of that “lost son” of Jacob, who upon his return from Egypt, and fixing his eyes on his father, fell on his neck and wept. So powerful was the moment that dad realized that nothing more on earth could be viewed as its equal, save death and reunion with God and his people ( Genesis 46). ” I am ready to die”, he said. Consider the happiness of a daughter-in-law who finally locates her husband in the crowd of returning soldiers after thirteen months in Iraq and rushes to him while the tears of both envelope their embrace. Then there are the tears accompanying the birth of a first child, then the second, a third, and all the way to the last.
Truth is, our tears matter to God. The Psalmist records that “God keeps our tears in a bottle– his bottle (Ps.56:8). “Are they not in your book?” We cannot really experience life in the absence of tears. Psalms 6:8 says, “That God has heard the voice of my weeping.” In fact it was Spurgeon who noted the importance of weeping when he said:
Is it not sweet to believe that our tears are understood even when words fail. Let us learn to think of tears as liquid prayers, and of weeping as a constant dropping of importunate intercession which will wear its way right surely into the very heart of mercy, despite the stony difficulties which obstruct the way (spurgeononline.com)
Finally, Scripture assures us of an upside as well. In the 126th Psalm, one designated as a Song of Assent and likely memorized so that it could be more effectively sung on the way to worship, the writer hears himself say:
Those who sow in tears, shall reap with shouts of joy– he who goes out weeping, bearing seed for sowing shall come home with shouts of joy. Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning. (Ps.126:5; and Ps. 30:5)
And one day, the Apostle John notes that
He ( Jesus) will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away (Rev.21:4).
Until then, we mourn our distance from God and his perfect peace; and we cry, like one gentleman I prayed with recently; whose affection for those closest to him and for someone he did not know showed no variance– he cried as he prayed for both. And that’s why I practice a closer walk with the men I love and the God who loves me. Even so come Lord Jesus.
Until then, Here’s to a good cry!
MJC
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