{"id":4834,"date":"2025-08-22T07:51:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T11:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4834"},"modified":"2025-08-22T07:51:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T11:51:11","slug":"meta-weep-with-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/22\/meta-weep-with-others\/","title":{"rendered":"META: Weep “With” Others"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u00a0Each weekday in the month of August, we will pursue \u201cprepositional truth\u201d by zeroing in on a single Greek preposition in a single verse, noting the theological richness so often embedded in the humble words we so often overlook.\u00a0<\/em>

Charles Darwin could never figure out tears.

As far as he could tell, they were \u201cpurposeless.\u201d They fulfill no obvious evolutionary need.

For Darwin it remained a mystery why Homo Sapiens is the only creature on Earth that sheds emotional tears. Of course, if the famous scientist had ever watched that parting scene at the end of E.T<\/em>. or spent a lifetime cheering for Purdue\u2019s football team, he might have known why grown people cry.

Dutch psychologist Ad Vingerhoets, who\u2019s become known as the world\u2019s expert on crying, suggests something that\u2019s no doubt closer to the mark. In his book Why Only Humans Weep; Unravelling theMystery of Tears<\/em>, he writes, \u201cWe cry because we need other people.\u201d

Tears are like flipping the Intimacy Switch. There\u2019s something within us that is automatically drawn to someone who is weeping.

Crying babies touch our hearts. Help soon arrives on the scene. Something like that continues through our adult years as we experience others who weep in frustration, grief, or pain.

The apostle Paul tells the Christians at Rome, \u201cRejoice with<\/u><\/strong><\/em> (META<\/strong>) those who rejoice. Mourn with<\/u><\/strong><\/em> (META<\/strong>) those who mourn\u201d (Romans 12:15).

Here again we encounter the great power of that simple preposition. META<\/strong> reinforces the centrality of \u201cwith-ness\u201d in the Bible.

God tells his chosen people at Sinai that he will be their God, and he will be with<\/u><\/strong><\/em> them. There is nothing quite like this anywhere else on the global religious smorgasbord \u2013 a god who promises intimate nearness. In the ancient world, people were terrified even at the idea of encountering divinity. Old Testament characters like Moses, Gideon, and Isaiah at first are shaking in their sandals \u2013 only to realize that God is actually offering them a grace-based kind of partnership.

Jesus spends something like three years with<\/u><\/strong><\/em> his disciples. He promises to be always with<\/u><\/strong><\/em> them as they take his message to the world. Paul eagerly ponders the likelihood of his own death, knowing that at last he\u2019ll get to be with<\/u><\/strong><\/em> his Lord face to face.

But Romans 12 is different. Here we see that the Bible\u2019s vertical dimension of \u201cGod with us\u201d becomes the very grounds for reaching out horizontally to others. We are to be with<\/u><\/strong><\/em> our brothers and sisters in Christ when they are rejoicing and when they are mourning, when they are singing and when they are sobbing, when everything seems beautiful and when everything seems to be turning to dust.

People in the ancient world thought this was crazy.

English philosopher Simon Blackburn has pointed out that Christianity introduced four unexpected virtues: humility, patience, chastity, and charity. None of the classic philosophers of Greece and Rome thought these were noble ideas.

Humility? The ultimate goal in the ancient world was to climb to the top of the heap, and to let everyone else know you had made it. Patience? Such restraint was undoubtedly for suckers. Chastity? You\u2019ve got to be kidding. Sexual license was a given.

The Christian notion of charity was likewise considered a headscratcher. Why would anyone want to provide care for people who were not in their own family?

But this was Paul\u2019s whole point. When we choose to \u201cbelieve into\u201d Jesus as our Leader and Forgiver, we automatically become members of a new kind of family. And we\u2019re called to be with<\/u><\/strong><\/em> our sisters and brothers in the faith especially in their experiences of hopelessness and sorrow.

Notice that Paul doesn\u2019t say, \u201cBuy an inspiring book for those who mourn,\u201d or, \u201cFix those who weep,\u201d or, \u201cTell those crybabies to stop being so emotional,\u201d or, \u201cRemind them that God\u2019s in charge, so there\u2019s nothing to cry about.\u201d

No. We are called to cry with those who cry.

When you think about it, that doesn\u2019t really solve anything. It doesn\u2019t erase someone\u2019s problems or grief. But when we cry alongside another hurting person, their pain suddenly becomes shared pain. And that is often the first step to deep healing.

John 11:35 (\u201cJesus wept\u201d) has become such a familiar verse that we have to do a bit of work just to imagine the reaction of those who first heard it.

Against all expectation, God cries in cemeteries. He weeps with<\/u><\/strong><\/em> us. This was a revolutionary idea in the ancient world. It was commonly assumed that God, in order to be God, had to be impassive or unfeeling. If God could somehow be moved or affected or even changed by our suffering, he would be disqualified as ruler of the cosmos.

Instead, the God who rules this broken world cries over its brokenness. He joins us in feeling the whole human bandwidth of suffering, pain, and death.

Tears are the ultimate non-verbal communication, and for a very interesting reason. We cannot hide them. They\u2019re literally right before our eyes.

Psychologist Henry Cloud points out that tears seem to be \u201cvulnerability by design.\u201d After all, it\u2019s conceivable we could have shed tears between our fingers. Or perhaps behind our knees. Instead, they show up right where the eyes of another person meet our eyes \u2013 out there for the whole world to see.

This seems to be a divine strategy to bring us closer to each other, especially when we might feel helpless and want to hide.

So go ahead and cry today. God himself shares whatever you are feeling.

And with time we\u2019ll come to grasp the full truth of that old saying:

When I came into this world, I was crying and everybody else was laughing. When I leave this world, everybody else will be crying, but I will be laughing.<\/em>

The God who is with us<\/u><\/strong><\/em> has made it so.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here \u00a0Each weekday in the month of August, we will pursue \u201cprepositional truth\u201d by zeroing in on a single Greek preposition in a single verse, noting the theological richness so often embedded in the humble words we so often overlook.\u00a0 Charles Darwin could never figure out tears. As far as he could… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4835,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[986,473,567,985],"class_list":["post-4834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-charity","tag-prepositions","tag-tears","tag-weeping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4836,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4834\/revisions\/4836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}