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Location: Leeds, Yorkshire, United Kingdom

Became a Christian on the 10/03/00 and my life hasn't been the same since... I went to Uganda, China and South Africa on short term mission, spent 4 years at Bristol University, and five working in Kent & London. I'm now enjoying working as a student pastor in Leeds, being married and learning to be a dad!

Sunday, July 25, 2010

So many tears

When we see one person suffering it pulls at our heart strings. When we see two people suffering it affects us more.

When we see 100 people suffering it overwhelms us. When we see 1000 people suffering our emotion to the situation is often no stronger.

Why is this? Is it because we care less and less? Possibly. I think it is more likely that we have a finite capacity for feeling compassion. I only have so many tears.

One person is not designed to look with God’s eyes on the whole world – we don’t have enough tears.

University lecturers talk about something called the ‘zero-sum game’. This talks about the idea that if you add anything into a situation you will lose something of equal value. It’s like pushing one more book onto the shelf that’s already completely full.

Sometimes I feel like my emotions are like this. I already have a full heart of emotion. If my heart is stirred about the poverty in Ethiopia my heart can’t remain stirred for everything I currently care about. It’s like I’ve exchanged righteous anger for the child prostitutes in Latin America for righteous anger over the famines in Africa.

I think everyone feels guilty at one point or other about this sort of thing. You resolve to pray faithfully for a friend’s situation, but one of your family gets sick and suddenly your emotional energy is redirected. When you see your friend in a few months you feel incredibly guilty when you remember you’ve not been praying for them like you promised!

You see, I only have so many tears.

It’s not like that for God. He feels our pain about every situation. In fact he feels all the pain as if he was in the situation. God feels the pain of a child prostitute as if he was the child. God also feels the pain of the starving family outside Addis Ababa. He feels it as if that ache in the gut was His. He feels the pain of you watching your child die as if he was holding that child.

Except he doesn’t. He feels it much worse. He looks at the broken child, the hungry family and the grieving parent and values them far higher than they even value themselves. His value of us is infinite. Why? Because he made us in his image.

He feels all the pain – that everyone in the world is feeling right now. All at once.

He feels all the pain – more intimately than we can understand. All at once.

He feels all the pain – all the pain throughout all of history. All at once.

God is not playing a ‘zero-sum’ game. He has limitless tears. His grief, his anguish, his indignation know no limit. His bookshelf is never full.

By choosing to love us God has chosen to break himself. God. Broken. For us.

You see the reason God sent Jesus to this world. By choosing to keep loving us God became broken.

He didn’t send Jesus to create some religious observance.

He didn’t send Jesus to get a passport for some of us to get out of this world.

He sure as heck didn’t send Jesus begrudgingly.

God sent Jesus as a sacrifice to bring us back to him. He sent him to begin restoring the broken people, broken families, broken communities and broken nations.

God didn’t send Jesus for our benefit. He sent him because he wanted to. His heart is so heavy with all the injustice in this world that he gave up what is most dear to him to overcome it.

You know, when we start to see the world through God’s eyes our priorities change. When we start to love people the same way God does our hearts become so heavy that we are willing to give up what is most dear to us to overcome the injustice. Be that your wealth, your family, your career, your church or your aspiration.

We only have so many tears.

Our job is not to try to spread them thinly over everyone because we feel guilty about not doing it. Our job is to seek God’s heart for the small corner of the world we find ourselves in and pour those tears out unceasingly on the people God shows us.

It might cause us to change our priorities, it might cause us to look foolish to our friends, it might even cause us to fall out with other Christians who claim we’re being irresponsible.

We only have so many tears. God will lend us some if we ask.

If you’ve still got your own tears left then you’re way too far away from God’s heart.

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