A Purpose for Tears?

I have shed a fountain of tears in the last couple of days. It’s somewhat comical to tease and attribute it to pregnancy hormones but, in reality, it’s more than that. God is doing a work in my heart, though I’m not quite sure exactly what it is yet. This sounds incredibly vague, but it has something to do with life and death.

A book I just finished this morning is part of what God is using to stir something within me. The book is entitled Same Kind of Different as Me. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. Without giving anything away, I shed just a few (thousand) tears reading this book (please don’t let that deter you – it’s a must-read). I also have a friend who just lost her baby boy this week just 30 seconds after birth. I have spilled jars full of tears over her and am crying again now, as I can’t even think about it and keep my eyes dry (I guess being pregnant with a baby boy doesn’t help matters!).

Now, I have to say that I believe fully that God is Who He says He is – righteous, just, and true. I believe He is good. I believe He gives and takes away. I believe He loves perfectly and fully. He is Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. Yet still there are times in life when, like this morning, I fall on my knees and through tears tell Him that I don’t understand. And it’s okay. Even at the darkest hour of my life (thus far) almost 7 years ago, I knew it was okay to not understand everything. I realized it would be quite prideful of me to proclaim there was no God because of the existence of pain in the world. How could I possibly come to that conclusion when I know for a fact that there’s no way I can understand all things? A quote from the book helps me to understand (read as a former slave might speak) – “If you want to know the truth about it, nothin’ ever really ends but something new don’t begin… When somethin’ ends in our sight, it begins somewhere else where we can’t hear it or see it or feel it.” The author also quotes C.S. Lewis (I would assume either from Problem of Pain or A Grief Observed): “The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God, or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary, for no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren’t.” That’s sort-of a hard truth to swallow, I know. The perspective you hold about pain depends fully on what you believe about God. Either there is a good God and, therefore, even pain has a purpose (even though sometimes unseen), OR since there is pain in the world there is either no God or a bad one. I choose to believe the former.

Whatever it is God is currently teaching me, it lies somewhere along the lines of what this wise, former slave has written – “The truth about it is, whether we is rich or poor or somethin’ in between, this earth ain’t no final restin’ place. So in a way, we is all homeless – just workin’ our way toward home.