The God of all comfort keeps watch over your weeping. He gathers up all your tears and puts them in his bottle (Psalm 56:8).
Even before God became man, it's clear throughout the Old Testament that God feels sorrow, even weeps for the crushing blows of His people. Psalm 34:18 promises us that “the Lord is close to the brokenhearted.” How can you be close to someone who is brokenhearted and not feel their pain?
Desperation. Crying out to God is an admission of one's coming to the end of self and placing hope in God alone. The psalmist declared, “In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears” (Psalm 18:6).
He hears our cries of unhappiness, pain, frustration, exhaustion, and fear. We can be honest with Him. His listening ear is always open to our prayers. His loving heart wants to embrace us as we cry on His shoulder.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.” And the One seated on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Until that day, do not forget that He is aware.
It is at this point in the text that God corners Samuel and tells him that he has mourned long enough and it is time for him to “stop crying over spilled milk”!
Does God see me and my pain? The answer is certainly yes (see Deuteronomy 31:6 and Matthew 28:20).
"The righteous call to the LORD, and he listens; he rescues them from all their troubles. The LORD is near to those who are discouraged; he saves those who have lost all hope."
On the one hand, the cross arises from the absence of God. At the climax of Jesus' crucifixion, he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46; cf.
Joyful sorrow
Whether they result from physical pain, from emotional pain, or from an encounter with goodness and beauty, one of the gifts of tears is precisely that we pray through them. All of our tears have been taken into the divine life by Jesus, the one who has wept with us.
Reformed theologian William M'Gavin opined that "the four sins that cry to heaven for vengeance; these are, wilful murder—sin of Sodom—oppression of the poor—to defraud servants of their wages" are greater in gravity than the seven deadly sins.
Ishmael (Gen. 21:7); Hannah (1 Samuel 1:15); Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 20). Blind Bartimeus (Luke 18), etc., all cried to God because of the vicissitude of life and God showed them mercy. Even Jonah in the belly of the fish CRIED TO GOD and God heard him.
We Are Precious and Honored in His Eyes. In Isaiah 43:4, it says, “Since you are precious and honored in my sight and because I love you, I will give people in exchange for you, nations in exchange for your life.” In God's eyes, we are precious and honored.
We cry out to God in acknowledgment that He is God and we are not. In doing so, we look to Him as controller of the outcome. We pray in faith, knowing that God is more than capable of answering our prayers, but we also accept the reality that He may not answer in the way we want.
God comforts us through the Bible and also through prayer. While he knows the words we will speak before we ever say them and he knows even our thoughts, he wants us to tell him what is on our mind and what we are worried about.
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
Pope Leo the Great, reflecting on this same passage, is thought to have said: "In his humanity Jesus wept for Lazarus; in his divinity he raised him from the dead." Jesus felt deeply the pain of Lazarus' death.
Jesus wept even as He called His friends and each of us to believe. He's with us in grief and shows us a resurrection that goes beyond the grave to bring new life to this world in which we live-because we believe.
before the nails and the spear, Jesus was whipped and beaten. The whipping was so severe that it tore the flesh from His body. The beating so horrific that His face was torn and his beard ripped from His face.
DEAR R.N.: The most important thing I can say is to assure you that God hasn't forgotten you or turned His back on you. God's promise is clear: "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you" (Hebrews 13:5).
Tristitia (sorrow/despair/despondency)
We can come to worship with any emotional state and be accepted — whether we're crying, joyful, angry, or anywhere in between. We just need to be cognizant of our tendency of letting emotions override God's promises, commands, and truth. Your feelings do not change how much God loves you.
He hurts when we hurt. The psalmist said, “As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:13-14). The truth that God hurts when we hurt found full expression when it was revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.
God also uses pain to make us more like Jesus. Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” God uses all things, even painful things, for our good.