Why Are You Crying?

Mar 1 2024 - Amy Raby

“Why are you crying?” My husband’s voice echoes in my mind from earlier in the day. I ask myself the question over and over. I try to answer it, but no response seems to suffice. A body knows when a heart is aching, when it’s fragile and needs to be tended to. Even if the mind can’t quite express it, the body was designed to read the room of the soul. 

Eyes puffy from tears throughout the day and tenderness in my heart. I read of another woman who was crying. I’m amazed to see these words in the small passage I turn to in my Bible. The mention of her tears comes up often and twice she is directly asked the question, “Woman, why are you crying?” 

Once by angels. 

Once by Jesus. 

I whisper to myself, “why are you crying?” 

I read the words on the page before me again. Jesus didn’t have to ask Mary Magdalene why she was crying. He already knew the answer, but He asked nonetheless. He cared for her and wanted her to know it. The Psalm manifested in the Savior, “you yourself have recorded my wanderings. Put my tears in your bottle…” (56:8). He was attentive to her tears. He wanted to hear from her, to know where she hurt. 

What an invitation. 

How He cared about Mary’s tears. 

Oh how He cares about my tears. 

“But Mary stood outside the tomb, crying. As she was crying she stooped to look into the tomb.” (John 20:22) 

The Spirit invites me to look into the tomb. I resist. Tombs are scary. They’re dark and full of dead things. I too am standing outside a tomb, crying. What might I find if I look into the cold caverns of my heart? What did Mary Magdalene find? 

Through tears and fear, I tell myself to look into the tomb. I pray under my breath…Jesus, show me what’s in the tomb. Take me where it hurts, to the springs from which these tears so bountifully flow. 

And He is faithful. 

I think of what Mary found when she bravely looked into the tomb. She found the resurrected dead. She found evidence of resurrection power and the Lord of love. She found what she was looking for; she found where Jesus was. 

He shows me my tomb. He shows me the place of pain and sorrow, of loss and uncertainty. I could not have named it this day in a thousand tries because it had been stuffed away, 

embalmed, buried six feet under with a giant tombstone covering the memory. The tears flow and flow at the wound He uncovers, at the kindness of His excavation. He tends to my lament. 

He softens my sadness with His warm embrace. The Father cups my face in His hands, like a young child about to be kissed, and He takes His God-sized thumbs and gently sweeps them across my soaked cheeks, receiving the grief and the tears telling the tale. I taste of heaven, graced with the longed-for-eternity where God Himself will wipe away every single tear from my eyes in real time (Revelation 21:4). 

He cares. He asks, “why?” 

He is the keeper of tears and tombs. It baffles me to receive such love.