Tears from Heaven

It’s Christmas season, right? And many people, including me, have heard the Christmas story hundreds of times growing up in the church. Even if you aren’t someone who regularly attends church or anything, you are probably somewhat familiar with the story-- that Jesus was born to Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem.

For me, its easy to gloss over the details of the story and think that I’ve heard this so many times that I don’t need to hear it again.

But I heard something interesting about this story today. It’s seems so obvious that I don’t know why it never occurred to me before. Did you ever think about the fact that the first sound that Jesus probably made on earth was a cry? Since the Bible implies that Jesus was a normal baby (except for his divine nature), doesn’t it make sense that Jesus cried when he was born?

Way back in the day, before Jesus was born, the way that God spoke to people was through people called prophets. God would give them a message to tell the people, and they would all know that God spoke. But then there was this period of time that there were no prophets. God seemed to be silent. This went on for about 400 years. And then, one night, that silence was broken by the sound of God again. And that sound was him crying!

And I guess I thought this was interesting because of the difficulties that I have had in my own life over the past several years. It just seems like I go from one crisis to another. I have had to deal with some pretty major, life altering situations recently. Hasn’t really been fun. And it’s easy to look at those things and wonder if anyone can really understand what I have been through. Does God exist within my own suffering? What am I supposed to do with this?

But when you think that the first thing that God did when he entered this earth was cry, it gives me some hope. Maybe we are more like God than we realize when are having a hard time with things. Maybe he is closer than we realize when we are upset. He does know what it’s like to cry-- he’s been there too!

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (The words of Jesus as recorded in the Bible, in the 5th chapter of the book of Matthew)