Earlier this week I came home and assumed the usual position… Mac on my lap with at least 15 tabs open to various embassy, hostel, and NGO sites, clad in my most comfortable pajamas and sweatshirt, with the television playing in the background. That evening there was a Hallmark special on.
After only a few minutes of the story, the tears were streaming down my face and understandably didn’t stop. I mean, it was about a young boy with Tourette’s who dreamed of becoming a teacher and eventually won teacher of the year but not before finally gaining his father’s approval, finding true love, and having one of his second graders die of cancer! I didn’t even get a break during the commercials as they were all of the variety that somehow manage to convince you that the keepsake ornaments really are the magical key to a wonderful family Christmas. Hallmark is like onions for me.
Some of us are more sensitive to onions that others, but with enough exposure we will all tear up. We should cry. It’s how we were made.
I’m not saying we should all sob through Hallmark commercials, but when confronted with the cruelty shown a young boy with Tourette’s or the tragedy of a little girl sold into slavery so her family can eat, I believe we were created to respond a certain way. We were made to cry.
My eyes fail from weeping,
I am in torment within,
my heart is poured out on the ground
because my people are destroyed,
because children and infants faint
in the streets of the city.
–Jeremiah, in Lamentations
The Bible was written in tears and to tears it will yield its best treasures. God has nothing to say to the frivolous man… Those Christian leaders who shook the world were one and all men of sorrows whose witness to mankind welled out of heavy hearts. There is no power in tears per se, but tears and power ever lie close together in the Church of the First-born. It is not a reassuring thought that the writings of the grief-stricken prophets are often pored over by persons whose interests are curious merely and who never shed one tear for the woes of the world.
–A.W. Tozer
Arise, cry out in the night,
as the watches of the night begin;
pour out your heart like water
in the presence of the Lord.
Lift up your hands to him
for the lives of your children,
who faint from hunger
at the head of every street.
–Jeremiah, also in Lamentations
His exhortation is still applicable today. My prayer is that through this blog and this trip that the world will come in a little closer for each of us… that we might cry out, pour out our hearts like water for our children.
