Several weeks ago, my daughter asked me a question I remembered while sitting on our newly screened porch today watching rain pour out of the sky.\u00a0 She asked me quite randomly one day if I thought rain was created the first time God ever cried (which would have to have been after the whole Adam\/Eve thing).\u00a0 “Do you think that it’s possible, Mom?”\u00a0 Wow, I love the minds of children; and I think I’m beginning to understand what it might mean to come to God as Scripture commands us to, as children do–with imaginative minds, with honest questions, with simple faith, with big belief, and with a spirit that fully embraces the truth of God’s word when it tells us that anything really is possible with God.<\/p>\n
As I told my daughter, I cannot say that there’s a relationship between God’s tears and our rain; but I can say that I believe God’s tears are as real as the rain I got soaked in multiple times today as I walked our dog.\u00a0 How can I say this?\u00a0 I can say this for the same reason I can say anything about the attributes of God–because I’ve met his Christ and thus him.\u00a0 And Jesus, the very manifestation of God, cried when he walked among us.\u00a0 Jesus cried when his beloved friend Lazarus died.\u00a0 And he cried as he awaited his own torture and death on the cross.\u00a0 And he cried as he looked out over his Jerusalem in its lost state.\u00a0 Yes, Jesus, who represented God perfectly in every single way, cried–and that tells me God’s tears are real.<\/p>\n
I don’t know about anyone else, but I know that I need a God who cries with, for and over me.\u00a0 I need a God who is real–a God who gets it, who gets this world and how tough it is down here.\u00a0 I need a God who gets me.\u00a0 And Jesus is the only way I get that kind of God.\u00a0 It is just that simple.\u00a0 The Old Testament psalmist says this to\/about God, “You’ve kept track of my every toss and turn through the sleepless nights, each tear entered into your ledger, each ache written in your book” (Psalm 56:8, The Message).\u00a0 When I hurt to the point of crying a “river of tears” (my daughter’s words),\u00a0 my aunt used to tell me God kept every one of those tears in a bottle.\u00a0 Most people I know would run straight into the arms of such a Father most tender, if only they could find a way to believe he is indeed real–Jesus Christ is that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several weeks ago, my daughter asked me a question I remembered while sitting on our newly screened porch today watching rain pour out of the sky.\u00a0 She asked me quite randomly one day if I thought rain was created the first time God ever cried (which would have to have been after the whole Adam\/Eve […] <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6VlK3-6L","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions\/421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}