I am grateful for a God who weeps. When grief slips into my life like fog floating low in the mountains, I know I am understood. Lately, melancholy is hanging around again. A silent companion. So silent I didn’t even know it was there. Could be because it’s been 2 years since Mom’s service. Maybe it’s that Dad’s birthday is approaching. It’s kind of like tiptoeing through a minefield when so much loss is this fresh. The usual birthdates. Tip toe. The death dates. Tip toe. The obvious Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Tip toe. But the more obscure dates sneak up on me and Kaboom! I am unexpectedly ripped apart. Then again, maybe this sorrow is just hovering because that’s what grief does. Walks beside us, to remind us of big love by showing us big loss.

I am comforted by the shortest sentence in the Bible. Jesus wept. Maybe when weeping, there isn’t a need for words. Maybe it is all about feelings too deep for words. Jesus gets it. Lazarus was his good friend. Even when he knew the surprise ending, he was moved to tears. At the separation. At the pain. He felt the sorrow. He ached for his friend. I love a God who relates to my pain. I feel seen and not so alone.

It’s not just his own grief he feels either. He sits with those who grieve. Empathy is in short supply these days, but not for a God who weeps. His heart is broken for the downtrodden. In Romans 12, he tells us to weep with those who weep. He knows when we sit in sack cloth and ashes with another, we will be changed. Our hearts will soften. Our connection will deepen. Our community will grow. Weep to change? Weep to mature? Only God could use such loss to build something out of the rubble. Maybe our lack of real-life connection to our neighbors is why we can’t see eye to eye. God is moved by compassion; maybe we should be too.

He also weeps when we don’t. His tears are blended with ours, but they also fall when we are unaware. He cries when we turn on one another. When we look outside ourselves to place blame and cannot see the darkness in our own hearts. When we are full of self-righteousness and pride. When we believe we are superior and others are less than. When we believe we have a corner on the truth. Or that we are actually representing him to those around us. He weeps at the condition of our hearts and how far we have strayed from communing with him in compassion. How far we are from seeking humility and servanthood.

While he weeps, he waits. For us to see. For us to choose a different path. We have not sought him to expose our own hearts. I don’t think we really want to see them. It is easier to pretend the wickedness is within our enemies, alone. That we have no part in the darkness that is growing around us. We cry that our world needs revival, when it may be us that need repentance.

The best part of a God who weeps is that means he is a God who feels. Who loves. Otherwise, he would just keep a checklist or have walked away from me a long time ago. The depth of his tears for me reveals the depth of his love. In my season of loss, that means everything to me. Even in my blindness to the motives of my own heart, I am grateful for a God who cares enough to weep over my failure to check my sinful state.

Recently it has felt as if my voice is missing. A hole of sorts. I sit down to write and the words don’t flow. It is a stop/start exercise in frustration. Much of who I am, has changed in the past few years of loss. A gaping hole in my heart, the heart from which I write, has left me like a puzzle with missing pieces. Cracks and breaks in the surface go deep into where the words reside. Within those bottomless pits, his tears comfort me. He doesn’t try to fix it. He doesn’t rush me through. He just sits beside me and lets me cry. Shared grief with a God that understands my deepest needs? Yes, please.