A Christian who Weeps

I don’t want to be a Christian

who forgets how to feel—

who hides behind answers,

quotes verses like shields,

and silences sorrow

with a song.

I don’t want a faith

of romanticised abstraction,

where resurrection is polished

and the cross is theory.

Give me something real—

flesh and blood,

grief and grace.

I want to weep

with eyes wide open.

Tears that speak truth.

Tears that rise

from the ground of compassion,

from the jagged knowledge

that the world is not

as it was meant to be.

I have seen it—

the wounded souls,

the haunted eyes,

the bruises beneath the surface.

I have felt the weight

of injustice

that crushes and isolates,

while the world looks away.

These are not tears of despair—

but of resistance,

of aching love,

of holding the pain

when no one else will.

I want a hope

that isn’t saccharine.

Not hopium.

Not denial in disguise.

But a defiant, dirt-under-the-fingernails

kind of hope—

the kind that walks through the valley,

sits in the ashes,

and still whispers,

“Even here… God.”

I want a gospel

that holds the wound.

A Christ who draws close,

a Spirit who groans,

a God who gathers every tear

in a bottle,

holds every sorrow

like a fragile flame,

and knows

what it is to break.

I want to believe—

not cheaply,

not loudly—

but with trembling trust,

that one day,

every tear

will be wiped away.

Not erased,

but remembered,

redeemed,

and transfigured.

Until then,

let me be the kind

who weeps.

Who walks in holy realism.

Who holds vigil

in the shadow of the cross

and waits,

with aching hope,

for the dawn.

- Rev'd Jon Swales