Where is God In Tragedy & Suffering? Where is God When We Weep?

YOU NEVER CRY ALONE — no one ever, ever cries alone. Jesus weeps with you over every loss, every grief, every tragedy.  

Maybe those are two of the most powerful words in all of Scripture, in all our suffering: “Jesus wept.”

In the midst of all kinds of excruciating heartache and devastating headlines — the real lifeline for all our heartbreak is:

Jesus comes, and Jesus sees, and Jesus weeps, and the reality is that Jesus didn’t just enter into the world; Jesus intimately enters into your hurting world, the world of your broken heart. 

The wounds of your heart makes the God of heaven weep; and your heart has always wholly captivated His, because this is who He is, and has always been: 

“When Jesus saw (Mary) weeping (after the death of her brother  Lazarus), and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ 

They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ 

Jesus wept.” (John 11)

The moment invites you to feel His arms around you: Your tears move Jesus to tears. 

No one in the history of the world has ever been more tender with the lines of your story, of heartbreaking stories, than the Word Himself. 

No one in the history of the world has ever been more tender with the lines of your story, of heartbreaking stories, than the Word Himself. 

Jesus, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3, ESV), physically knows what it’s like for a soul to groan, for a heart to howl. And there is incomparable comfort in it: Jesus comes to be with you and weep with you, because the gentle love of Jesus wants nothing more than to hold you through this. 

The comfort we seek is always found in the arms of the co-suffering God. 

And that’s what holds us: Jesus’ sovereignty over everything may cover us, but it’s Jesus’ solidarity with us in everything that comforts us.

And before He ever begins to work all things together for good, God weeps over with us what is altogether wrong. 

Jesus weeps —- and, also, Jesus does more than just weep, and He feels more than just empathy with us in our grief. He is “deeply moved in spirit” not once but twice, both as He weeps with Mary –  and as He moves toward Lazarus’ tomb. Mary’s grieving tears leave Jesus “greatly troubled,” the Greek verb for “greatly troubled” expressing a deeply felt passion, like a groaning within Himself. 

And before He ever begins to work all things together for good, God weeps over with us what is altogether wrong. 

Some translators even render it as “a deep anger” that “welled up within him” (NLT). 

What is this anger, this passionate feeling, this raw mixture of grief and groaning and fury that roiled within Him? 

Jesus wasn’t only weeping over Lazarus, because He knew He was about to miraculously raise Lazarus from the dead….  

Jesus wasn’t just weeping for Martha and Mary, because He knew their devastated grief tears were about to turn to tears of delirious joy as He rose their brother, Lazarus, from the dead… 

What was happening was staggering: 

When Jesus was weeping, Jesus was seeing into the future, into every grave, every loss that would ever be, and Jesus was weeping with you. 

When Jesus stood by a grave on this planet, Jesus saw you, Jesus thought of you, and He wept, furious over how losing your people, your beloveds, would hurt you. 

With tears blurring His whole world, Jesus stands with each of us who will ever sit with deep loss, weeping hard, hating death as much as we do, and Jesus is ferociously angry, to hell and back, with the horror and havoc of death for each of us.

In your darkest valleys, feel how Jesus’ furious love hates all kinds of death too. 

Standing there with heart- shattered Mary and Martha, Jesus knew the surreal miracle of Lazarus’ resurrection that was about to happen.

He knew their brother’s funeral procession was about to become a thrilling resurrection celebration; He knew who He is: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die.” He knew how those are the words that quake the darkest chambers of every heart awake. He knew that only one kernel of trust that He is the cosmic, great I Am, who lays down His life to kiss the universe back to life, is all the belief that is ever needed to rescue us, and revive us back to life. 

But instead of telling Mary the miraculous breakthrough that was about to happen, Jesus, the weeping God, broke down with Mary. 

True, Jesus points to the truth of the resurrection and eternal life — and yet: Jesus passionately weeps for all the griefs of life here and now. 

Because God knows: Shared tears are always multiplied healing.

God knows: Shared tears are always multiplied healing.

And because Jesus knows you need one arm stretched out, pointing to the hope of forever Life beyond — and Jesus knows you need another arm wrapping ’round you right now, weeping with you right now,  lovingly holding you with comfort right now. 

And there is deep comfort in knowing that we are not alone: Whatever suffering you’re furious over, Jesus is furious too. However you’re mad at the heartbreak in this broken world, Jesus is mad too. And because Jesus is mad at heartbreak, and because Jesus is madly in love with you, Jesus’ love for you drives Him to war against all the suffering in the world—for you.

To love is to suffer, which means that the only seeming way to end the problem of a world that suffers would be to have a world devoid of love, and devoid of all the lovers. 

But your God, who is Love Himself, puts on skin and enters the story of the world and the tender places of your story, and ultimately goes to the Cross to absorb all the dark, and begin the revolution to end all suffering we have ever known.

Jesus, who is Love and who loved the very most, suffered the very most, to love you into the fullest life. 

Love Himself not only catches every single one of your tears; He also weeps with you, His tears watering a new way of being, a new way of life. 

A resurrection.

~ an excerpt from Day 20 of “Loved to Life: a 40-Day Pilgrimage with Love Himself that Will Change Your Life”

In the Midst of Loss, There’s a Way to be Loved to Life

In the midst of hurting days, in the midst of 365 days in a year — there is this invitation, to just 40 Days with Jesus — to be Loved to Life .

This 40-Day Pilgrimage with Jesus through the book of John, is your invitation to come right now & touch the hem of Jesus — & to let Him touch your wounds, touch your tender places, touch your tears with His own gentle love that weeps with you — & touch you with His own healing and hope.

Come, your year will thank you:
40-Days with Jesus to be Loved to Life, & experience healing in your one & only life, that only He can bring. Come be Loved to Life.