Made to Cry (Part I of II)
Every man and woman is born to cry. Crying usually is our first act outside the womb. That first whack from the doctor or midwife shocks us into the harsh reality of life. How many mothers, after a long-troubled childbirth, then have wept along with their child?
How wonderful that we should be blessed by the Creator with the gift of tears.
Ecclesiastes 3: 1 & 4, There is a time for everything and a season and for every activity under heaven. . . A time to weep and a time to laugh.
But we prefer to laugh and are willing to pay money to have professional laugh-producers and comedians to help us do just that – laugh. Yet someone has said that behind every great humorist is one who knows how to cry. When we understand that our Creator designed us to cry and we read about great Biblical people who cried, we all should have no shame, embarrassment, or misgivings about shedding tears.
Tears are all through the Bible. Can you picture Joseph weeping at the reunion with his brothers who had sold him into slavery? Can you not feel Eve’s tears as she learned of Abel's death? Can you sense Esther’s tears for her people? Can you mentally stand in the dark shadows of Gethsemane, eavesdropping as Jesus wept? Can you hear the painful sobs from Peter after the rooster crowed the third time? Can you comprehend the intense weeping of the great Apostle John in his fifth chapter of the book of Revelation?
In Harold Ivan Smith’s book, Tear-Catchers, the author writes: “In a close reading, the Bible becomes a mirror. We feel a oneness with the heroes of the faith. They, too, cried.
“But we also sense a fear of tears – that firmly entrenched bias against them. Somewhere, at some dark moment in human history, someone – or some group – decided that tears were inappropriate; others said only under certain conditions. Thus tears became restricted; less treasured; devalued.”
Smith goes on to say in his book that this denial of the God-givenness of tears has been passed on through generations to this present day.
Nevertheless, I am in awe of God’s great servants in the Bible who cried, often bitterly. So awestruck am I by their tears, I realize no one needs to feel reluctance or shame in shedding theirs.
The first recorded Biblical weeper is Abraham, a man of rich emotions and a friend of God (James 2:23). When Sarah died at the ripe old age of 127, Abraham went to Kirjath Arba “to mourn for Sarah and weep over her” (Genesis 23:2).
Our colloquial term “to weep over” someone may have originated because ancient mourners like Abraham stood over the body of a loved one and spilled their tears, according to writer Harold Smith. The death of a wife was one of those few times, then and now, when a man could show tears and still be a man.
After Esau’s father Isaac had mistakenly blessed Jacob, “... Esau burst out with a loud and bitter cry and said to his father, ‘Bless me, me too, my father!”
(Genesis 27:34). As it became clear to Esau that the mistake was irreversible, Moses wrote, “Then Esau wept aloud” (Genesis 27:38b).
Next time: A God that can cry, and eternal words for the broken-hearted, considered, in the conclusion to “Made to Cry.”
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Chris Voss is a pastor at First Christian Church, 317 S. Main, Donna.