Image Credit: by Mark Spears, A.K.A. Daily Jesus on Facebook
What are tears?
And why are they so uniquely Human? I seem to recall that there may be a few species within the animal kingdom that are known to shed tears but I believe that it’s more along the lines of “Polly Want A Cracker (not ‘really’ language’),” and not therefore comparable to the human experience.
A Google search for “why do people cry?” reveals 34,300,000 pages returned. Many of them deal with the scientific rendering of the answer (i.e. “a drop of the saline, watery fluid continually secreted by the lachrymal glands between the surface of the eye and the eyelid, serving to moisten and lubricate … blah, blah, blah), but mostly, the answers focus on just what you would expect: ‘People shed tears in response to great emotion.’
So, does God differentiate between our regular emotion (along with our wants, desires, needs, etc.) and our heightened or superior emotions? Yes, He does (of course He does).
Consider this: God told King Hezekiah, through the prophet Isaiah, that he would not recover from the illness that he was suffering from, that he would soon die because of it. Hezekiah’s response?
“Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, “Remember, O LORD, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.”
Isaiah had barely left the palace when God suddenly, and immediately, spoke to him again:
“Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the LORD. I will add fifteen years to your life.” II Kings 20:5
Or, consider what God said to King Josiah through the Prophetess Huldah in II Kings 22:19; “…because you tore your robes and wept in my presence, I have heard you, declares the LORD.”
And the Psalmist writes: “Record my lament; list my tears on your scroll — are they not in your record?” Psalm 56:8
So it seems obvious that God is well acquainted with our tears and that He is fully aware of their significance. But that shouldn’t lead anyone to believe that just by mustering up a few ’crocodile tears‘ that they can unduly influence the Lord’s favor. He is completely familiar with the difference between the genuine article and those that are but cheaper imitations.
How do we know that God is so intimately acquainted with the phenomenon of emotional weeping? Because of the one verse in all of His Holy Word that has the dubious honor of being the shortest of Bible verses. It is found in John 11:35:
“Jesus wept.”
