Many of us absorbed a theology of tears without noticing. Tears are allowed, briefly, as an honest response to pain, but they should resolve into something. Into praise, or into the quiet confidence that God is in control. The tears are the before. The settled spirit is the after. If you are still crying, you have not yet arrived at the faith part.
"Jesus wept" (John 11:35). Two words, and he is standing outside the tomb of his friend. He knows what he is about to do; he has already told the disciples that Lazarus will rise. The weeping has nothing to do with hopelessness. He weeps because the people he love are in pain, because death is real and costs something, because the grief of Mary and Martha has reached a place in him that will not stay unmoved.
The Son of God, holding the resurrection in his hands, stops and weeps first. He enters the grief instead of hurrying past it toward the miracle, and he lets it cost him. Then he acts.
The Psalms are soaked in them. "My tears have been my food day and night" (Psalm 42:3). "I am worn out from my groaning. All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears" (Psalm 6:6). Those are the words of people whose faith was honest enough to bring the whole of their experience before God, including the nights that did not end in peace and the griefs that lifted on no human schedule.
God does not ask you to arrive at his presence already composed. The Psalmist brings the tears themselves as the offering. "Record my misery; list my tears on your scroll, are they not in your record?" (Psalm 56:8). God writes them down rather than waiting for them to stop.
He is not waiting for you to stop crying before he draws near.
Some disappointments produce a grief that surprises you with its depth. The prayer you prayed for years that went unanswered. The person you loved who did not stay. The version of your life that quietly closed while you were waiting for it to open. A verse will not fix that, and neither will a worship song or a well-meaning word from someone who has not been through it.
It needs to be wept. Not forever, and not as a destination, but honestly, in the presence of a God who wept outside a tomb and knows from the inside what it costs to love in a world where people leave and prayers go quiet.
Your tears may be, right now, the most faithful thing you have.
He is near already.
