God hears the cries of the poor, the anguish of parents whose children are victims of gun violence, and the anger of those who have been marginalized and oppressed and whose history has been hidden by people of privilege and power. God also delights in the singing of sparrows in the early morning and the flashing of fireflies on a summer evening. God feels the pain of an injured baby bird, fallen out of its nest, and the loneliness of a pet mourning the death of its human companion.
God’s experience of the world is cruciform in nature. The cross is more than an event on Calvary’s hill. The cross reveals God embedded in all creation, sharing our joys and sorrows. When Jesus wept over Jerusalem, he was crying God’s tears. When Jesus died on the cross, his pain was real, and so was God’s. God feels the anguish of those who have been abandoned and persecuted. God has not abandoned you. Do you feel that?
—from the book Simplicity, Spirituality, Service: The Timeless Wisdom of Francis, Clare, and Bonaventure
Rev. Dr. Bruce G. Epperly
1 thought on “God’s Tears”
I am very grateful that GOD is a God of compassion & knows our pain
But the great mystery is that GOD’S ways are not our ways & that GOD allows suffering, which entered the world when human beings used His gift of free will to sin which messed everything up. Our LORD took our sin & suffering upon Himself on the Cross & saved us from our sin & reopened heaven. But that did not put an end to suffering, which still runs rampant, or to sin,.which also runs rampant since as human beings we can still use His gift of free will to make wrong choices. The only answer for us is to draw closer to the LORD when suffering comes ( instead of giving in to the temptation to be angry with Him for allowing it), do the best we can with the help of His grace to avoid sin & do good & to cooperate with His grace in allowing Him to use this suffering to grow in holiness & grow closer to Him & thus allow Him to use it to make us better people & to do some good in this world in our connection of our suffering with His.
How different GOD’S nature & ways are from our human ways!. Although GOD is perfect & I am not, how hard it is sometimes to make sense of the fact that GOD, Who is sovereign & thus could do whatever He wants & have everything the way He wants it, still allows suffering which not only makes humans & other living creatures sad but, since He loves us & all His Creation & is loving & compassionate, causes Him so much suffering & sadness, & so it will be until the end of the world.
From a very human perspective,.which is lacking in understanding & far below His ways, in my presumption to imagine myself in His place (which I hope is not sinning, since I acknowledge that GOD is GOD & I am not & because He is GOD, everything He does is supposed to be the best, even when it does not make sense to me) I would seek to fix everything so that bad people would be unsuccessful in their attempts to do bad things, that no one —or at least no one who is dedicated to striving to do good & to be good–would suffer & everyone would be happy & full of joy & then not only would people & other living creatures never suffer & be sad, but GOD would never suffer & be sad. I would think that having the power to do anything & fix everything would result in making everyone happy & thus only having to feel & share happiness.
But then I guess no one would ever grow & we really could not grow in relationship if GOD became Santa Claus & earth became heaven.
So GOD is perfect & His ways, as strange as they seem, are right, even though it is so hard to understand & sometimes even hard to trust, & even though very often they don’t seem to make sense to us in our human minds & life will only be perfect in heaven.
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