Do not forget that when we weep, the Lord weeps with us

(Revised, updated, July 21, 2013)

In a memorable scene in John Wimber’s biography, The Way it Was, a “prophetess” comes to him, saying she has a word for him from God.She sits and weeps wordlessly. After about ten minutes of this, Wimber, who has a sermon to prepare, gets irritated, and asks her to give him the word. “Yes,” she says, and resumes weeping silently for another ten minutes.

Finally Wimber says, “Listen, I’ve got to go. If you have a word for me, please share it.”

And she says, “I did. That was the word.”

And Wimber, who was then overworking and miserable, a victim of his own success, was shaken.

The Lord was weeping over him.

* * *

Jesus feels our pain, in the same way that we wept with Martha over the death of Lazarus. The wrong tracks we take, the times we hurt ourselves with our sin, the times we exhaust ourselves for nothing. He sees the futility of it all, and he is grieved.

I am resuming writing the book which I most want to write. After working in it, off and on for 15 years, I shelved it 7 years ago.

And I have been having extensive conversations with God about it.

I have mentally put into his hands, this book which, in many ways, is blood-soaked. In my ambition for my writing, I blew off health, not exercising enough, or eating healthily or taking time to cook, and so gained a lot of weight—85 pounds, to be precise. I sacrificed quality time with my husband. I could have invested even more in the girls. I let the house slide into mess. I overstrained my nervous system with frequent burn-outs.

Oh, that period of idolatry had physical, mental, spiritual and emotional costs, for idols are like that—cruel. They suck you dry and still want more.

But I still feel it is the book I have to write. So claiming the promise that “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18) I put the book into Jesus’ hands, and ask him to redeem it.

And in my mind’s eye, I see him bend down over my book. I see his tears fall over it.

The Lord is weeping with me over all the unnecessary pain, and his tears of love and forgiveness are turning the scarlet of sin as white as snow.

I seem them as tears of redemption, merging with my tears of repentance.

And I am set free to go forward with joy.