God is Weeping Still

Recently, as I was travelling in a foreign land it began to rain. Not ordinary rain, but the heavy, heavy drops of the Monsoon. As I watched the rain fall, I was reminded of this article I wrote many years ago, one that now seems even more relevant in our times-

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We had rain the other day, real rain, weighty drops falling as tears from heaven.  A picture of God’s tears. For surely, He must be, weeping that is over this not sunbaked but sin-baked, spiritually dried out land, this erstwhile gospel-shaped country that has been given all the promises of God in the message of Jesus.

The promises for which countless Christian men and women fought and gave their lives, burned, hanged that this land may be set free; the promises for which Hugh Latimer and his friend Nicholas Ridley burned together on an Oxford street, Latimer crying out “Be of good comfort, Mr. Ridley, and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace, in England, as I trust never shall be put out”; the promises for which William Tyndale, as he hanged so we could read the promises of God in English, prayed that God would open the King of England’s eyes- He did, to the benefit of those a world away. Us!

And so now, the rain falls, drops of God’s tears over this Christ-rejecting antipodean land. But it is not new of course. The people of the promise, the people of Jerusalem rejected Him too and Jesus wept the tears of God. How much more must God be raining tears on this Christ-dismissing country, that received but now rejects, ignores and increasingly mocks, all the blessings of the gospel,

God is weeping. What will our response be?

Paul also, the great apostle, had ‘great sorrow and unceasing anguish’ in his heart (Romans 9:2) over the Christ-rejecting people of the promise, his Jewish brothers and sisters who had been given all the benefits of the blessings of God.

Could it be that this is the generation in which Latimer’s candle, brought here across the seas, dies in these lands? Or will we weep God’s tears also for those Christ-rejecting millions around us consigned to eternal darkness. Will we pray again for ourselves and His now-emaciated and enfeebled church, to be filled with the power of the Spirit of the Jesus who weeps, the Spirit of the God whose tears as rain from heaven fall on the pagan tides of corruption, degradation, spiritual desiccation and bankruptcy of Christendom lost. Such that God’s tears may cease.

Indeed, it rains, God is weeping still. What will our response be?