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Sometimes as I sit at the Lord's Supper, I have to ask myself, "What is the matter with me? How can I sit here and contemplate the passion of the Savior and not be melted in tears?"

An unknown poet faced the same questions; he wrote: "Am I a stone, and not a man, that I can stand,/ O Christ, beneath Thy cross,/ and number, drop by drop,/ Thy blood's slow loss,/ and yet not weep?/ Not so the sun and moon,/ which hid their faces in a midnight sky,/ while earth convulsed and groaned - yet only I / can look, unmoved, unwooed./ Great God, I must not be,/ or I shall know the anger that He bore./ Oh Lord, I pray Thee, turn and look once more,/ and smite this rock, my heart."

Another wrote in a similar spirit: "O wonder to myself I am,/ Thou loving, bleeding, dying Lamb,/ that I can scan the mystery o'er,/ and not be moved to love Thee more."

I admire those sensitive souls who are so moved by the sufferings of the dying Redeemer that they break down and cry. I think of my Christian barber, Ralph Ruocco. Often as he stood over me, he would talk about the agonies which the Savior endured. Then with his tears falling on the cloth cover, he would say, "I don't know why He was willing to die for me. I am such a wretch. Yet He bore the penalty of my sins in His body on the Cross."

I think of the sinful woman who washed the Savior's feet with her tears, and wiped them with her hair, and kissed His feet, and anointed them with ointment (Lu. 7:38). Although living on the other side of the Cross, she was more attuned emotionally than I with all my superior knowledge and privilege.

Why am I such a block of ice? Is it that I have been brought up in a culture where it is considered unmanly to weep? If so, then I wish I had never known that culture. It is not a disgrace to weep in the shadow of Calvary; the disgrace lies in not weeping.

Borrowing Jeremiah's words, I must henceforth pray, "Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night" (Jeremiah 9:1); weep, that is, over the sufferings and death which my sins brought on the sinless Savior. And I take as my own the immortal words of Isaac Watts: Well might I hide my blushing face, while His dear cross appears; Dissolve my heart in thankfulness, and melt my eyes to tears.

Lord, deliver me from the curse of a dry-eyed Christianity!

 

Bible Verses: Lamentations 1:12Jeremiah 9:1

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