When Heaven Weeps...

When the blackness of night covers us in its mantle, hiding the myriad details that fill our waking world, only then is our soul bared.
What pains and unexpressed sorrows drift to the surface uninvited?
What demons haunt, laughing at our feeble efforts, deriding our small victories and leaving us accused and found wanting?
Do we ever really know ourselves? Have we plumbed the depths of our characters, followed the twists and turns into the labyrinth of our own soul?

A few short weeks ago my friend took her own life, and I am struggling to make sense of it. It was so completely out of character. None of the usual warning signs. A sweet and beautiful girl, with a gentle-hearted husband, and two adorable children. Her seven-year-old daughter is a dancing sunbeam, full of light and effervescence. Her three-year-old son a grinning cherub of mischief. I hear her cheery voice and see her smiling face before me. I’ve watched her grow into womanhood, strong, resilient, warm, vibrant, beautiful. Life often takes us over rough roads, and for some the rocky patches lead through dark valleys. As she stood there that night, did the demon of abandonment return in a sudden chill swish of black wings, the sharp spear of her own mother’s rejection thrust again into her heart, killing reason? Or did an emotional threat go horribly wrong?

Oh, God, how did Satan seduce her away from your love, and so convince her of her worthlessness that your soft voice wooing her heart was blotted out by darkness for one terrible moment? When heaven weeps, my heart weeps too, Lord. And how it breaks for the torment her husband must live with daily, and the loss those two sweet children will feel every day of their lives.

I received a message from God the morning after the tragedy, when reading My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers. “God is making us spell out our own souls. It is slow work, so slow that it takes God all time and eternity to make a man and woman after His own purpose...It is astounding how ignorant we are about ourselves...We have to get rid of the idea that we know ourselves...The only One Who understands us is God.”

What depths there are to each of us that we cannot plumb or even fathom. We don't really know our extremities or our possibilities. We barely know ourselves. Just as He did with His disciples, when Jesus takes us alone He begins to reveal the truths about ourselves, and we discover our desperate need for understanding and redemption.

Perhaps one of the most amazing passages in the Bible is Psalm 139, where God reveals that He has loved us even before the foundation of the earth, and laid His hand upon us.

“Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
If I settle on the far side of the sea,
Even there your hand will guide me,
Your right hand will hold me fast.”

A misty rain began falling the morning after the tragedy, as heaven’s tears washed away all traces of the night’s tragedy from the blood-stained earth.




By nightfall, the ground was covered in a white mantle of snow.