Of the Need to Cry

He's our "sensitive one", as we often put it.  The boy who cries for anything.

The boy who cries this morning because his portion of the cartoon-splattered newspaper pages has been ripped - torn nearly in two.  The boy whose low, forced wails only wear on my Momma ears.

"Emmett, please stop crying.  I know you're sad, but it will be ok."  I'm weary from it, the crying, the noise, the chatter.

"It's broken and so I need to cry!" comes his response.

And the truth of it echos.

It's broken, and thus we cry - because we need to.

This world around us, it is broken.  And, yet, do we cry?  Does the brokenness alone break our hearts?  Or are we de-sensitized? Does the chatter, the noise, deaden our ears to the pain?

Am I moved to tears when I see evidence of a child, a herd of children, the un-important ones, digging through garbage in Ethiopia? When I hear of daughters, sisters, being sold like cattle, only for a much more vile purpose, in places on the other side of the world - do these facts paralyze me in sadness?  Or are they just numbers? A fairy-tale of injustice? Someone else's life, someone else's problem?

Jesus wept.

Jesus weeps.

This world is broken and so He has to cry.

This world is broken and His people are unmoved. And He must cry.

Oh, Lord, break my heart over this broken world. And then show me where to move, to heal. To be part of the solution to someone else's problem.  The problem of humanity.