3. Sharing God’s Tears
My grief is beyond healing, my heart is sick within me. Hark, the cry of the daughter of my people from the length and breadth of the land: “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images, and with their foreign idols? “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” For the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold on me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored? O that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!33
Jeremiah 8.18-9.1
Let not those who hope in thee be put to shame through me, O Lord God of hosts; let not those who seek thee be brought to dishonor through me, O God of Israel. For it is for thy sake that I have borne reproach, that shame has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brethren, an alien to my mother’s sons. For zeal for thy house has consumed me, and the insults of those who insult thee have fallen on me.
Psalm 69.6-9
Do not pray for a thing that you lack, for your prayer will not be accepted. Rather when you wish to pray, pray for the heaviness that is in the Head of the world. For the want of the thing that you lack is [a want] in the indwelling Glory. For man is a part of God, and the want that is in the part is in the whole, and the whole suffers the same want as the part. Therefore let your prayer be directed to the want of the whole. Pray continually for God’s glory that it may be redeemed from its exile.
Israel Baal Shem Tov34 (Judaism)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
People who experience the heart of God in their lives cannot come before God without shedding tears, no matter where they are. They know the original Will of God and struggle to become His sons and daughters. If you are among them, sharing God’s Will and desire, He will visit you and weep with you.
Where are the roots of God’s grief? They are inside us. They are inside our nation, this world and all things of creation. We must carry on a movement to eradicate them and restore God’s joy. For us, the center of our life of faith should be to experience God’s grief.
(4:60, March 2, 1958)
Is God deserving of pity? Many people would question why the all-knowing and almighty God needs to be pitied. Still, regardless of how all-knowing and almighty He may be, nothing can relieve Him from the shock of losing His beloved children. If there had been a way for God to find relief from that shock by Himself, He would not have had to suffer through a six-thousand-year course of history.
(35:88, October 4, 1970)
God seeks people thirsting for faith and hope and burning with love, who say, “God is in shackles on account of humankind, including me; God was accused by Satan because of me; Jesus died on the cross for me; the Holy Spirit went through a bloody history of struggle on my behalf. God, please give me the strength.
I will bring rest and liberation to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.”
(7:162, August 30, 1959)
God our Parent cannot free Himself from lamentation until all people are free from lamentation. How can any parents be comfortable while their beloved children are in misery? This explains why we should liberate God, who exists in such a state.
How shall we liberate God? Since we live in a realm beset by restrictions, which also restrict God from loving all people, we are responsible to restore the realm of liberation where God can freely love all people. Since we were corrupted through the Fall, we must liberate God by becoming children who are victorious over the Fall.
(65:100, November 13, 1972)
As long as God, the Center of the universe, is in anguish, human beings have no way to salvation. Who can lift away the suffering of God? Only someone who experiences the depth of God’s suffering in his own life and suffers even beyond that.
If God were joyful and happy, then all beings immersed in suffering could hope to find a way to happiness. But how can salvation be possible while God, the center of the universe, is suffering? Therefore, at all cost, we must not let God remain in suffering.
There is no question that the fall of God’s children, Adam and Eve, was the pinnacle of God’s suffering. God is the Father of humankind and Adam and Eve were His first children. Their fall had a direct impact on God.
The resulting separation caused God incredible pain—physically, mentally and emotionally. When they departed [from the Garden of Eden], God must have wept bitter tears.
That pain in God’s body, mind and heart was the beginning of human suffering; it has continued through history…
However, Adam and Eve did not understand the seriousness of their sin. They might have felt some anguish in their minds and hearts because the left the bosom of God their Father, but they were unable to grasp the gravity of the pain and suffering they caused God. Ever since, God has had to relate to human beings who lack any perception of His suffering heart. For God, this is the ultimate agony.
How can you possibly experience God’s heart? By listening to a sermon like this you may feel it conceptually, but you still do not feel His sorrow down to your bones. Consider a woman who loses her parents, husband, and children, as well as all her possessions, in a tragic accident. How would she feel? Although during her lifetime in the fallen world she could see and experience many types of evil and sin, her pain and grief at losing her entire family would be unbearable. How much more shock and grief God must have felt, being completely pure and never having experienced any sin, suffering, or crime.
Today many people commit suicide. Do you think the despair that drives people to commit suicide can be compared to God’s despair at the moment Adam and Eve fell? No one but God is truly entitled to use the word ‘suffering’… We may experience tragedies in our life, yet as time passes the pain and grief will ease. However, God is a spiritual being. He has no concept of time. During one thousand years or even ten thousand years, the pain of the Human Fall has never left God’s mind and heart. Nevertheless, could God not simply cast His suffering out of His heart? More than omniscient and omnipotent, God is absolute in love.
(94:34-36, June 26, 1977)
How many tears have you shed for God? Have you ever sought out a way to take on suffering and toil on behalf of God’s pain and toil, even though your own limbs might be torn off? You have not tried. In seeking to become God’s sons and daughters, you have to shed tears for the purpose of the whole.
When you meet God, you should comfort Him with unending tears. Representing the original ancestors, you should say, “Father, I am Thy son (daughter). How great was Thy sorrow upon losing me! How many times throughout history until the present day hast Thou suffered humiliation, pain and extreme hardship from my descendants!”
The almighty, all-knowing God certainly has the authority to judge the entire world and even Satan. Yet God cries out in pain, knowing that even though He is capable of bringing judgment, He cannot destroy the world He toiled to create. Our hearts break when we think of God in this situation. God is not dwelling in a heavenly place. He stands lonely and desolate, accused by Satan, robbed of His foothold by the satanic world… How much have you wept in sympathy with God’s situation? The issue comes down to this.
(51:111, November 18, 1971)
Father! Humankind knows not Thy sorrowful heart permeating the earth.
Humankind does not know Heaven’s sad tears soaking the footprints of human history;
hence we are ignorant of Heaven’s endless lamentations encircling our minds and bodies.
We confess that we are descendants of rebellion
who cannot establish our dignity before Heaven or be trusted by Heaven.
Father, no one on earth can stop Thy tears;
no one can hold and comfort Thee in Thy sorrow;
no one can protect Thee on Thy path.
Therefore, the grief on this earth is Heaven’s grief permeating the earth;
the sorrow on this earth is Heaven’s sorrow permeating the earth;
the frustration on this earth is Heaven’s frustration permeating the earth…
When in these last days we despair,
we turn towards Heaven and cry out, “O God, please help us!
“Father, please have compassion on humankind!”
Yet who in this age clings to Thy heart, sharing Thine anguish?
Who clings to Thy mind, weeping with Thee?
If there were such a person,
Thou wouldst call him Thy true son or Thy true daughter,
grasping him or her as Thine object partner on earth.
(6:235-36, May 24, 1959)