By Chris WittsWednesday 3 May 2023Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
Something remarkable that happened in Luke Chapter seven – The woman that came into the house of Simon the Pharisee – Jesus was there with this woman of ill repute. Someone who was judged rather harshly cried and poured this expensive ointment on Jesus. Here was the public demonstration of grief. A woman who, I guess just felt so ashamed and the wonderful words of Jesus. Your sins are forgiven. May God give you peace.
That’s what Jesus said. I’m talking about tears. Question is, can tears really be bad? I heard about a woman who attended church who ran out of the church before the the service ended. Now she apologised to the minister and said, Look, I feel such a fool. You know? I’m sorry. I I shouldn’t be carrying on, but it wasn’t like this the other day. I’m sorry. She said I was OK until the prayer this morning. And then I really lost it. I shouldn’t have come to church – when I come here, she said, I just can’t keep from crying.
It’s an interesting concept, isn’t it? Something touched her life. People do cry in church every Sunday, sometimes for reasons we know, like a loss or other private reasons. But people cry when they come to church and that’s good. There’s really nothing wrong with that.
Tears are not a problem. They are part of a solution now when there’s tears, this releases tension and stress, pain and injury of all kinds that they’re really a gift from God that can help us to heal. So it doesn’t hurt anyone to cry. We might feel uncomfortable. Tears help us to to feel and then recover from our hurt. Whether it’s a fresh burn on our hand or even something physical like an ache in our heart. Have you noticed how often tears are triggered when you express kindness to someone or you feel empathy with someone?
That’s part of, I think, why church is such a good place to cry where there are people around you who care – friends who feel the presence of God and his love. And those things are a very powerful combination.
So tears when they come, they’re a way to help us communicate how we feel whether we intend to or not, and they draw others to share with us. So that’s all a good thing. It makes us much stronger. So all humans cry when they get hurt. Now, whether that hurt is physical or emotional, it’s an involuntary response.
Why would nature and God have created this complex biochemical drama?
If weeping wasn’t part of the beauty of being human? Actually, tears serve to clear these hormones, I believe, out of our system. And so if they don’t flow out physically, they become toxins that can hurt us. So if you want to look at it from that aspect, tears do a vital or if you like a chemical cleansing job for our bodies.
In fact, it could help us from being quite stressed. Well, most of us know that sometimes we say, why don’t you have a good cry? What are we talking about?
The other thing is that crying will eventually stop. Many of us who have held many people have held their tears for too long fear something. They fear that if they start crying, they won’t be able to stop, but tears will run out. They certainly will. Tears are God’s gift to us. I guess you could say that for washing our wounded souls.
You know, there’s three myths that to us men have come up to understand. In our growing up years, a man’s man is big, brave and strong. We are many. We, many of us men are raised to be competitive. You know that we are to win, to be bigger, to be brave and stronger. The second myth is a man’s man is not emotional, doesn’t express emotion, and then the last thing. And this is the key for us today. A man’s man is not weak and shouldn’t cry. Have you heard that men should not cry? Men have grown up and we’ve grown up by learning that crying is a demonstration of weakness.
And so there are other ways that us guys learn to repress the pain and grief. If a man cries today, even still, he’s called a wimp or girly. But God has given us this wonderful blessing, the blessing of tears.
Let’s Pray
Well, thank you, Lord, we know that you touch us through yourself and your spirit and through other people. And we thank you for the cleansing of tears. Amen.