"When the guy on the screen says that he could hear the cries of children underneath the rubble, his voice starts to crack and how in the world does anything stand in a world like this?
How do you just put a jug of milk out on the table on a Tuesday and stand there watching your kids eat breakfast, light in their hair, the sky hanging outside the window like a potential Behemoth, when there’s a dad with his heart running liquid down his cheeks in Oklahoma, waiting for them to dig out the body of his crumpled boy.
How does the sky just rage unannounced, storm black and pelt us flat?
Who can stand when your heart’s flooded with grief?
God’s overflows.
“… his heart was filled with pain.” {Gen 6:6}
God has a heart. And it hurts. Not with just with a a few drops of ache, not just with a slow drip of sadness — His whole massive heart fills, swells, burns with this raw, relentless pain.
In the midst of the storm, all the emptiness of God floods with pain.
What grieving mother in Oklahoma could wake up today and forget her little one, could forget the way she smelled, the way her hair fell, the way his arms felt around her neck — what mother could just up and forget her always-baby?
And God whispers hoarse: That mother whose heart is bound to her child’s — doesn’t compare to how your Father’s heart is bound to you. {Isa 49:15}
The Lord of the Universe, He’s lashed Himself to us. And He didn’t need to. But He tied the knot Himself. God who hung the stars, He takes a thread of His heart and ties His to ours. God tied His heart to yours so when you feel pain — He fills with shattering pain.
So when we howl: “If there’s a God who really cares, He’d look at this world and His heart would break.”
And God looks to the Cross and says -- My heart did.
God’s heart breaks.
On that Cross — they speared His side and pierced straight into His heart filled with pain and it was the water and blood of His right broken heart that gushed right out.
It’s the quantum physics of God: one broken heart always breaks God’s in two. We never cry alone.
And our crying God, He catches every tear in His bottle — God catches every falling tear because He’s keeping us from falling apart.
I can’t turn away from the screen, from the father in Oklahoma brushing away the tears.
And all I can think is — God tied His heart to ours — and the tears of God are the essence of Time.
Time only continues on in this impossibly suffering world — because God Himself is willing to keep suffering the impossible with us.
That’s what we all share — that He shares the grief with us and reasoning is cold and His embrace is warm.
The Farmer tells me that they are calling for rain today.
Somewhere across the mid-west, they’re calling for rain.
And I can only nod, not trusting my voice not to break, trusting only His broken heart.
Trusting how it comes in storms –
these, the falling tears of God."
-Ann Voskamp from here and images from here
Praying for Oklahoma
