Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Behind the trying smile on our faces, we hide the heaviness of our heart and the scars of our regrets. Regrets from relationship we wanted but disappointed by the fear and fact of falling short from what we wish for. And they can hit you by surprise. It can be a lingering lesion that never heals but from time to time, sends a spasm when life decides to surprise you with the simple fact that regret can tear your heart apart and fill it with the heavy brokeness from which we never really recover.
As the heart weeps and the lips find no expression for its ache, the brain is slow to comprehend this well of emotions within us that we know not of nor expect. That is when tears cry out from a moment of searing sorrow as they scorch down our cheeks in a blazing trail of silent suffering. It is as if we will be forever haunted by memories of the long gone past. Washington Irving once said that "there is a sacredness in tears...they speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues as the messengers of overwelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love."
Blind spots of the heart make me realise for someone who takes pride in the wisdom, empathy and perceptiveness that I have when it comes to others, I might in fact be a total idiot when it comes to my very own feelings. Indeed, it is ironic that the valves of the heart can open faster than the lightening speed at which neurons of our brain travel when they let out tears to make us realise a truth which our mind failed to perceive but can only recognise in a reactive and retrospective strive to see what we ourselves failed to spot or buried in time to ignore.
Funny how humans work. We are frail and fragile creatues with so much limitation that it is hard to believe we were made in the image of God sometimes. Yet, God blessed us after creation and gave us an order of this world upon which we are bestowed to rule and have as what He intended. Even when we, along with creation, are broken by the unkept promise when man fell from Adam's downfall with Eve in Eden after temptation, God relented from destroying all living creatures as a creator who can start afresh. Instead, God lamented as he saw Noah and entered into a poignant covenant that:
"As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night,
shall never cease."
(Genesis 8:22)
Calvin once wrote that "the will of God is the supreme rule of righteousness, so that everything that He wills must be upheld to be righteous by the mere fact of His willing it." The bible has many references to God's plans, including that "the promises of the Lord are promises which are pure, silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times" (Psalm 12:6). So in trusting that God's ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than ours just as the heavens are higher than the earth (Isaiah 55:9), we trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5-6) and hope that we may flourish in the furnace one day. When we submit to Him and His plans for us, there is an element of trust without any conceit in that, we do so not just because He will make our paths straight (Proverbs 3:6) or that we know for those who love God, all things work together for good or that because we know the plans God has for us are plans to prosper us and not harm us, plans to give us hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). We do so because he is Lord. And so we entrust ourselves to God.
When Peter, one of the most devout disciples, disowned Christ three times just as Jesus predicted on his road to the Cross, he broke down and wept (Mark 14:72). When Judas betrayed Christ as part of the plan for the Passion of Christ as Jesus was handed over on his path to crucifixion, he saw that Jesus was condemned and was seized with remorse and threw away the money into the temple, the thirty pieces of silver which were given to him for the act of betrayal. Then Judas went away and hang himself (Matthew 27). When Job was told the horrific news that his sons and daughters died from a mighty wind that swept in from the dessert and struck the four corners of the house which coallapsed on them (in addition of his loss of livestock and the diseased affliction of skin sore), Job fell to the ground in worship and said: "Naked came I out from my mother's womb, and naked shall I depart: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21). All were perhaps part of God's "perfect plan" in the greater scheme of His infinite wisdom yet we witness the real human affliction and agony behind every moment of emotional suffering?
The scripture often reminds us of the speck of human existence as we are infinitesimal in the vast cosmos of past, present and future that God, the Almighty, sees and weaves through His tapestry of grace as the one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:6). The epistle of James pointed out that we are like a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes and James reminded us that instead of saying that "Today or tomorrow, we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money", we ought to say "if it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that". We are reminded by James in a rhetorical question that, "Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life?" because we are a mere mist in the immense span of time whereas the Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. It should come as no surprise that His understanding is unsearchable (Isaiah 40:28) because so great is our Lord, and abundant in power that His understanding is beyond all measure (Psalm 147:5). Yet, even the hairs of our head are all numbered and we fear not, as we are of more value than many sparrows (Luke 12:7). When King David looked at the heaves, the work of God's fingers, the moon and the stars which God set in place, he himself wondered what is man that God is mindful of him and the son of man that God so cared for him (Psalm 8:3-4)?
Perhaps as Peter wanted to rise to the occasion and be there for Christ in his time of need, it is through human failings and frailty do we really realise that it is us who need God to be there in times of need as we are broken. Perhaps tears can be a gift of grace from God as they remind us of things that are not as they should be so we cry when we feel broken when in fact, we are already broken. Perhaps as we weep over our brokeness, our tears can also be a kaleidoscope that shows a refracted world that is not what it should be since the time immemorial of original sin when we fell short in Eden under temptation. Yet, just as sin entered the world through Adam and Eve, and death through sin, God sent his only son into this world to wipe away our sin as we are washed in the blood of Christ and through the son of God, are justified before God.
So in God and God alone, can we rest our regrets.
