35 Jesus wept – John 11:35
There should be room in our theology for sadness. We look at the stories of Jesus, and we see an encompassing array of emotions – more than one might expect. If we are not careful, our faith and how we communicate it to others can become so easily become washed with optimistic sentiment. When it leans this way, it becomes cheap and detached from the very world it wishes to reach. Those around us know this world is hurting, we must be willing to look into the void and weep with them. Christ followers have the holy ability to look at a fractured world while still maintaining a stubborn hope. It is not a detachment from the world that Christ demands but a reattachment that is powered through Him.
Perhaps there is an incomplete picture of why Jesus came that is at the heart of this. Our happiness was not necessarily a motivating factor – for this is too small a goal. When He promises the abundant life (John 10:10), He promises victory but not the absence of grief. For He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, persecuted on every side for us. To live in this world is to be intimate with hopelessness for there is little hope apart from Jesus. This is why He came, to provide a restored connection to the Creator while still being entrenched in this world of heartache.
Shall we weep more?
Maybe, maybe not. We should at very least acknowledge the holiness in our tears. We know that our weeping is just as holy as our laughter. Our savior is found in the vastness of human emotion. When we grieve, we do so with and through Christ. When we doubt, we doubt connected to Him already. Every feeling is sacred ground for Him to be present.
He is always present.
Some days, the most sacred thing we can do is simply to keep living, moving forward, acknowledging the wound deep within and carry this sacred authenticity into a fractured world.
Matt simon blog 