A Time for Tears

Stanton Delaplane, the columnist, often wrote a very gay column, but one time several years ago, he wrote in a different mood. He said:

"No life can run smoothly, but how can I tell this to a ten year old girl? The other night we came home and the Siamese kitten was dead. You could see what had happened. I had had some steaks delivered on top of the deep freeze. The boxer dog had managed to push the door. The cat had gotten up and torn off the paper. The dog had managed to jump up and pull the package down. He must have been into it when the cat came down and tried to get into it, too. Oh, they had eaten and played together for three months now, but this time he just grabbed her by the neck, gave one shake, and she was dead.

"And so, there is trouble in Paradise today. Though we must all grow up from ten years and realize that kittens must go, I keep thinking if only I had come home a half an hour earlier. If I had closed the door tight, or if I had put the steaks into the deep freeze. For this morning, the little girl is miserable, the boxer is miserable, and I am miserable - and there is nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, that I can do about it, nor anyone else can do about it."

No, Mr. Delaphane, there is nothing that anyone can do about it, except weep. I find that this world is that kind of place, and it fortifies my soul to know that Jesus found it that kind of place, also. In at least two places recorded in Scripture, our Lord is confronted by circumstances where the only appropriate reaction seemed to be to cry. To us, that is a fact of tremendous importance.

In the first place, if Jesus wept, then weeping is realism and not sentimentalism. If Christ, himself, was left, upon occasion, with no weapon for the warfare of life except a sob, then how ridiculous of me to think that I can go dry-eyed through the days of my years. How stupid of me to set a goal for myself to wink, supposedly gaily and bravely, at the experiences that caused the Lord of life to weep, and to weep bitterly.

A Time for Tears, Louis H. Valbracht