Jesus Wept

I've been reading through Philip Yancey's Where is God When it Hurts? He's one of my favorite authors, and this book is a sensitive and respectful investigation of suffering and where God is in the midst of it.

He uses a quote that really struck a chord with me and I would like to share it with you. It's by Dorothy Sayers and I think it is timely considering we have just come through Easter and its contemplation of Christ's great sacrifice.

For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is--limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death--He had the honesty and courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.

For a long time, I had a hard time understanding what Jesus' role really was on the earth. He was fully God and fully man and I was stuck on the fully God part. I assumed that since He was God, that things did not really affect Him, that he couldn't have really suffered. That was a lie, and thank God He set me free from it. Jesus was fully human - He was tempted and tested, He had the full range of human emotions and was He subject to living in a limited physical body. He laughed, He got angry, He felt frustration, and He cried. I received a lot more comfort from Jesus after I stumbled upon some verses where He was talking about what He knew He had to do, and that He didn't want to do it. This revelation came at the time where I had to come to terms with having to give my children back to the Father and I didn't want to do it. I could finally relate to Jesus, and when I could relate to Jesus, I found I could relate to the Father. I discovered that I did not walk this road alone - Someone had already gone before me and prepared the way.

One of the most comforting verses in the Bible comes back to me time and again: "Jesus wept." Not only does He weep with us in our times of sorrow, but I think He weeps for us too. I think sometimes He weeps because we could experience deep comfort from Him if we would only draw near and lay down those things we think we need to carry on our own.