For so many of us worry, anxiety, sorrow, and pain permeates our lives. If this discomfort does not push against us daily it still can filter through to even the most protected of hearts during times of stress, fatigue, sickness, and mourning. We are fragile. Our emotions and hearts are prone to breaking. And too often, we weep. We weep with loss, with worry, with anxiety. We weep tears of angst, anger, and agitation. We weep with fear. We weep with and for others… and for ourselves. And when all has come to pass and we are so beyond ourselves and our understanding, we weep for sheer emotion; un-named and un-identified emotion… the waves of these powerful forces simply unhinge us.

Tears often are signs of our undoing. When we are beyond ourselves and cannot control the emotion within… we weep. When the pain or the hurt, the struggle, the worry, the fear overtakes us and we just don’t know what to do, where to go, or how to fix it… we weep. When the brave face we so desperately want to display to the world cannot for one minute longer maintain it’s stoic countenance… we weep. Tears are the physically manifestation that we are undone.

Jesus is near to the undone. Scripture tells us He was quite well acquainted with sorrow. Having a Lord that is near to our sorrow is a mighty thing… But Christ did one better. He FIXED the falls, He BECAME the tears, He SHARES our sorrows.

Even in our deepest despair and our wells of weeping, we are not without a God who sees us, who understands us, who comforts us… and ultimately, can FIX us. Our God comes down into our watery pits and cries with us. He is not without emotion. He is not without care.

He weeps with us.

Despised, rejected, betrayed, guilt-ridden, apart, sorrowful, grief-stricken, alone, sick, in pain, hurt, worried, anxious, tempted… Jesus knows all too well our suffering. Jesus understands. He weeps with us.

Isaiah 53:3-10 TLB We despised him and rejected him—a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way when he went by. He was despised, and we didn’t care.Yet it was our grief he bore, our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, for his own sins! 5 But he was wounded and bruised for our sins. He was beaten that we might have peace; he was lashed—and we were healed! 6 We—every one of us—have strayed away like sheep! We, who left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet God laid on him the guilt and sins of every one of us! He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he never said a word. He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter; and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he stood silent before the ones condemning him. 8 From prison and trial they led him away to his death. But who among the people of that day realized it was their sins that he was dying for—that he was suffering their punishment? 9 He was buried like a criminal, but in a rich man’s grave; but he had done no wrong and had never spoken an evil word.But it was the Lord’s good plan to bruise him and fill him with grief. However, when his soul has been made an offering for sin, then he shall have a multitude of children, many heirs. He shall live again, and God’s program shall prosper in his hands.

Be not dismayed. We have a God who knows, who understands, and who heals. The price has already been paid for the hurt, take rest in the peace that it bought and weep no longer!