“And when He was come near, He beheld the city and wept over it.”
Luke 19:41
There have never been any like them—before or since.
Tears.
They’re made of water, mucin, lipocalin, lacritin, immunoglobilins, glucose, urea, sodium and potassium. Although designed to clean and lubricate the eye, so often they begin flowing during a time of emotional distress, suffering, mourning or physical pain.
We can rest assured Jesus’ tears sprang from a broken heart.
Yes, His Holy Tears erupted from a grief-stricken heart over His People’s refusal to embrace Him as their long-awaited Messiah. Their theological and political expectations blinded them to Who He was/is and what He’d come to do—even as they do today.
But, all He wanted to do was show them the Father’s Love.
He longed to “gather them under His wings even as a mother hen shelters her chicks under her wings during a time of danger—but they would not” (Mt. 23:37). And, even today His “Spirit groans within Him” (Jn. 11:33, 38) over our unbelief and rebellious ways.
And so He still weeps.
Intermingled with the summer rains that fall are His tears over a single mother trying to raise three kids by herself on minimum wage. When the lightning flashes across the sky and the thunder echoes in the valleys, He weeps over an orphaned child searching for food in a garbage can in a large, metropolitan city. When an elderly spouse enters a nursing home or dies, leaving their lifelong heartmate in tears, our Savior weeps—for He never intended it to be this way.
Yes, it’s because of our sins that He weeps.
But it’s in His weeping that He becomes “well-acquainted with our grief” (Is. 53:3b). And, even though we’d believe He also wept because of being “despised and rejected. . .viewed of no value by those whom He loved most. . .seemingly stricken of God and afflicted. . .wounded for our transgressions. . .bruised for our iniquities. . .and rejecting His Love like a straying sheep refuses to obey the shepherd’s command” (Is. 53:3-6). . .He still willingly accepted such simply because He loved us and loves us still.
Truly, His tears weren’t the result of a selfish, self-centered pity party.
No, they were the tears of a seeking Savior that arose from thwarted, rejected Love. He wept because He knew the difference He could make in their lives. He wept because He knew He could give them what they’d been looking for all their lives.
“But, they would not” (Mt. 23:37c).
Oh, dear Pilgrim, let not those words be spoken of us! Let it not be said of us “I knew what He wanted of me, but I was too busy;” neither let us ever hear Him say “Depart from Me, you worker of iniquity; I never knew you” (Mt. 7:23). Instead, may the tears of the Weeping Savior melt our cold, hard hearts and transform them into the center of total surrender. That way we’ll always know “our tears are kept in His Bottle and recorded in His Book” (Ps. 56:8—KJV). And that way when we “sow in tears, we, too, shall reap in joy” (Ps. 126:5; Heb. 12:2b).
May 26, 2011
