Elumc.org

say things like, “God must love you very much to give you so much to handle,” or “Some day you will be a [From Alive Now, March/April 2011] stronger person because of this,” or “At least youhave other children,” or “You should be proud thatyour son gave his life for freedom,” or “At least you Being Human
survived.” We say these things to others when they Western culture tends to resist emotional pain are inconsolable. It is not that we don’t care. But we and unhappiness. Our world, full of smiling come face to face with suffering we cannot ease and faces in television ads, celebrates wealth and pain for which, try as we might, we cannot find recreation as “the good life.” In many ways, it is a meaning. We need meaning for suffering as much as world of Prozac and quick fixes. There is nothing wrong with smiling or recreation or Prozac;happiness, vacations, and solutions are wonderful Decades after my abuse, my first sense of God’s gifts when we get them. But we are also human, and presence came as I allowed the words of Isaiah 53 to to be human means living a life of ups and downs, sink into my damaged body. It is in the image of the experiencing the full range of emotions from great suffering servant — in Christ on the cross — that I joy to great sorrow. To resist sorrow, pain, anxiety, see God being violated, bloodied, battered and and confusion is tantamount to refusing to be molested. Christ suffers with every child who suffers, human, and we lose much rich experience and cries out with every mother whose child is sacrificed closeness to God when we refuse to be our full for someone else’s need for power. On the cross — where God is inconsolably crying with me — is where I find the beginning of healing. Not in the knowledgethat God is collecting my tears, but knowing that God The Beginning of Healing
is crying my tears. A God who suffers with me, who “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of is inconsolable with me, is a God I can trust again, suffering and acquainted with infirmity.”— Isaiah 53:3 not to protect me from harm but rather to be withme in all that happens.
Someone once said, “Tears are the language of the soul.” But tears are a language that most of us do not want to hear, let alone to speak. I was the victim Bread of Life,
of sexual violence as a child. And, while tears may be we are grateful that your table, like your grace, the language of the soul, I spent a great deal of energy trying to avoid tears because I could not imagine how, once the tears started, they would the buildings in which we worshipor the theology we profess.
We are promised that when our tears are turned toward God, they are not wasted nor shed in vain.
Psalm 56:8 even says that God keeps them in a by the love we graciously give to others.
bottle and writes each one in a book. If that’s the case, then God has lots of bottles and books with my name on them; and more bottles and books for all the children on this earth whose bodies also have is not being wealthiest, smartest,or having the largest church.
Personally, I do not find it comforting to think that God keeps my tears in a bottle. In fact, I am appalled that anyone might think I am comforted or consoled because “God treasures my tears.” That is the kind of Eager to be fed and forgiven we pray. Amen.
thing people say to someone who is crying. People

Source: http://elumc.org/docs/gps-2011-10-02.pdf