The Cry

Looking Behind
In Hebrew the word is “sa’aq.” Literally it is “the loud crying of someone in acute distress, calling for help and seeking deliverance.” It is the cry. It was a cry of someone in pain but also a cry of someone who knows things aren’t right. In the Old Testament the cry was heard by God and it caused him to act. That’s why I find Exodus 3 so amazing. Not because there is a bush on fire that doesn’t burn or because Moses backtalks God. All of those things are amazing. But the thing that astounds me is that God says, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them…” God hears the cry… and he comes down…
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Today
Exodus 19:1-6

I’ve been thinking about crying a lot lately. That will happen when you have 2 daughters who are 5 and 4. At least a few times a day one will make the other cry, more often they make each other cry. This usually leads to my wife crying in frustration. Lots of tissue in my house. What is kind of surprising is how much my daughters worry about the other when one is crying. They’ll do all they can to comfort the other, hunt down mom or dad to give a full report and even offer advice on how to fix the problem. It is enough to make a parent smile.

And it makes me think about God and how he hears the cry. As a dad I’ve gotten pretty good about hearing my girls cry, I can pick their cries out of a crowded room of crying children. And I can usually tell when it is a “real” cry and when it is an attempt for attention. But God hears all the cries of his children. He not only hears each and every cry, he also does something about them. God “comes down” to rescue his people.

Later, after God had rescued his children from Egypt he gathered them back at the mountain and he said they were to be a “nation of priests.” I think this is his way of saying that his children were to be about what God is about. The rescued were now the rescuers.

And that makes me wonder about all the times I see people crying out, people in need, people oppressed. I see them and I wonder, “when is God going to hear and come down?” Then it hits me… He has come down.

It is the night of his betrayal and in less than 24 hours Jesus will be dead on a cross. He celebrates the Passover with his disciples, he washes their feet, tells them of the new command to love and says that he is the way, the truth and the life. But then he says something that perhaps we skip over, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these…” And what if the “things” and “greater things” that Jesus has been doing is not the miracles but the service? What if those things are the healing and the compassion and the forgiveness?

Maybe we’re God’s ears to hear the cry, his hands to help, his feet to go and rescue? Is there any “greater thing” than that?