I was 16 the first time I left the foreign mission field. I cried like a baby. Every time since, I have been a blubbering fool for the people, no matter where I am. God has wired me in this way, like himself. Jesus is a people person.
Maybe as believers we don’t perceive ourselves as “people-people.” I think that’s simply because we haven’t yet seen that aspect of Jesus, and moved in his ways.
Fast forward a couple of decades to my first time on African soil, in 2019. I called my mother from Nigeria begging her to send my kids to where I was. It was my last night there with my husband and I was desperately seeking her wisdom, discernment, counsel and understanding, maybe even her permission, even though I was nearly forty.
She brought it.
“Erin,” she said.” Is that what the Lord is calling you to do?”
“No,” I replied sheepishly. “He didn’t.”
And he hadn’t. He had very clearly told me to go back home, actually–to advocate from a different place, a place that would keep me far from the hands, faces and proximity to the people I hope I get to serve for the rest of my life.
I wept for so long that day, and many days since for other nations, people groups, and still for my friends in Nigeria.
In the midst of that moment, the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane came rushing in through my tears. I felt the sweetness of Jesus saying, “I felt what you’re feeling too.”
It was the first time I had truly recognized the depth of personal investment Jesus had from his own soul for his disciples. He cried for us in the garden. It was as if he was already missing us. Think about it, could he truly be fully human if he didn’t?
Longing for someone that your soul loves is a gift of heaven. That’s why our spirits cry out, “Abba Father!” (Romans 8:15-17) There is a person (the triune God) that is missing. We are missing him, until we come to know Jesus as our Savior.
This Easter weekend, as you remember the suffering of Jesus, I invite you to see this story with new eyes. You are the joy set before him. You are worthy of the blood he shed, yes, but I think he is saying, you’re also worthy of my tears, my emotional investment, my soul grieving for you. What wonderful news to the hearer, that our God, great and mighty to save, didn’t suffer simply in the body, but suffered in his soul over us. He wept over us.
What other God is like this: full of compassion and abounding in steadfast love? Tell me who is like our God? One like this, who is so desperate to be near us. He is God with us after all.
Friends, this is how we can love with abandon. We can give from the depths of our souls to care for orphans and widows, we can feed the hungry, clothe the naked, build relationship with our neighbors and strangers around the world. We can get attached and allow it to cost us everything–even our very lives, because he did it first. He has blanketed that path with his own tears.
This weekend, as you praise the Lord for his wonderful works, his suffering, his resurrection, would you thank him for his tears too?