He Still Weeps

The sun was casting a sideways glance across the sky this morning.  Long rays of hope spread out like fiery fingers through the dense clouds that hovered low.  I wrapped my arms around my boys before sending them off to school, looked at them with intention and purpose, spoke my love over them and covered them in prayer.  Those parents, how their arms must ache for their precious children today.

This past Friday, while the cries of innocent children echoed through an elementary school miles away, I sat in the sanctuary of my baby girl’s preschool and listened to the sweet voices of four year olds, raised in perfect adoration for a baby who was to be born in a manger and become the Savior of the world.  The music was eclipsed by their childlike faith as they sang “Oh come let us adore Him…Oh come let us adore Him…Oh come let us adore Him! Christ the Lord!” There was such hope in the singing.

How do we who are believers, chosen to know the Divine Truth, reconcile the goodness of God with His providence?  The answer to that question is woven throughout scripture, from the beginning of the story to the end that is yet to come. Surely our human minds were never meant to fully grasp such a divine concept, but God gives us His Word so that we can take comfort in what we do know.  We know that “Jesus wept” John 11:35.  When the stench of sin and decay enshrouded his friend Lazarus, and the death of a fallen world filled up the tomb, Jesus wept.  He loved Martha and Mary, and their brother Lazarus. He wept with compassion for the grief of the two sisters, he wept for His friend Lazarus, and He wept for us all, each of us born into this life bound for the grave. Spurgeon, the great pastor, once said when preaching on this passage, that “A Jesus who never wept could never wipe away my tears”. We cannot forget the great mercy of our Savior, that in our suffering He does not forsake us, but that He wipes our every tear, he knows our humanity because He lived and died as one of us.

“Tears did not drown the Savior’s hope in God.  He lived. He triumphed, notwithstanding all His sorrow. And because He lives, we shall live also.  He says, ‘Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’  Though our Hero had to weep in the fight, yet He was not beaten.  He came, He wept, He conquered.” C.H. Spurgeon sermon #2091

I think of St. Stephen, the first martyr.  He saw “heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” Acts7:56.  As he was beaten, his body crushed beneath the weight of the heavy stones, he knelt in the glorious presence of the Son of Man, and finally, scripture says, he fell asleep, at peace with his Lord and also with those who had killed him. What a perfect picture of the mercy of God, that he would give Stephen this vision into the heavens, that he would see Jesus at the right hand of the Father, and that He would then be Stephen’s strength in the time of greatest human weakness.  What if those children in that classroom in Connecticut heard not the sound of the gunshots, but instead heard the choirs of angels singing the eternal song of hope?  Perhaps like Stephen, it was the face of Jesus they saw at their time of greatest suffering, standing in the gap between earthly death and life eternal, welcoming their precious souls into the heavenly kingdom.

My husband dropped our boys off at their elementary school this morning, and from the clouds of grief came a ray of hope, as a rainbow arched perfectly across the sky and covered the school. The promise of God’s divine mercy, of everlasting hope, of Emmanuel.