Holy Tears

Jesus wept.
we often laugh about this,
the shortest verse in the Bible,
the easiest to memorize.
but do we ever stop 
to think about what it really means?
Jesus wept.
Jesus, a human man, wept.
it takes a lot for a grown man to weep
both great sorrow and great strength
and Jesus, the bodily form of God,
wept at Lazarus' tomb.
our Lord God also cried in the face of His own death--
a sleeping like Lazarus'--
those agonizing hours before His imminent suffering
a choice He made Himself
before entering the womb.
or did He weep
for those who would feel the most
pain in His passing,
or for the great sin of the world
which He was about to shoulder
as a sacrificial Lamb?
this often spoken
often overlooked
passage embodies in a Name and a word
the unfathomable welding of human man
and Lord God
fully both
He took on the sins of every person
that has ever breathed a breath of this earth
and that ever will
showing greater strength and compassion than any man
greater humility than we ever dreamed our God to have
Jesus wept.
to see Jesus cry
watch tension, emotion seep
out with tears
that beautiful release but
then hear the agonizing cries of my Lord God
to know the pain
the gut-binding pain that takes hold and promises
never to let go
that nothing will ever be ok again
and the hope He knows for certain is there
seems but a shadow
of something that once was
my Lord God curled as he was in the womb
at the thought of His descent to the tomb
and all that trails behind
and drags before
the meaninglessness of it all when really
it means everything and
Jesus wept.

we know nothing of pain or sorrow
or Love.