Our small group has been studying through Nehemiah, which is a great book to read when searching for encouragment to keep going. The book starts off with Nehemiah hearing a report about the sad state of Jerusalem, which leads him to tears and anguish. This is so much at odds with our recent examples of masculinity from both modern culture (which whines and cries about everything, including how pop starlets are treated) and the masculinity of a few generations ago (which claimed real men don't cry about anything).
What a man cries about indicates what he holds dear to his heart. In Nehemiah's case, his tears were about something that was simultaneously concrete and abstract. The concrete reason for the tears was the broken down walls. The deeper but more abstract reason for the tears was that God's beloved nation and messenger to the world was in disrepute.
Our tears should fall when we see that the world is not as it was designed. Isaiah 53 refers to Christ as a man of sorrow and Jesus wept over Jerusalem for he knew its future (Luke 13). Too often we do not weep because we do not see what should be, but merely what is. We are like the Israelites of whom Jesus said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! (Luke 13:34)".
Let us pray (and see and think and feel) as Jesus instructed, "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
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