Daily devotion – the gift of tears
Genesis 49: 33 And when Jacob had finished commanding his sons, he drew his feet up into the bed and breathed his last, and was gathered to his people.
Genesis 50:1 Then Joseph fell on his father’s face and wept over him, and kissed him. 2 And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel. 3 Forty days were required for him, for such are the days required for those who are embalmed; and the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days.
4 Now when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spoke to the household of Pharaoh, saying, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, please speak in the hearing of Pharaoh, saying, 5 ‘My father made me swear, saying, “Behold, I am dying; in my grave which I dug for myself in the land of Canaan, there you shall bury me.” Now therefore, please let me go up and bury my father, and I will come back.’ ”
Death is not an accident, it’s an appointment – Heb 9:27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.
“Old men must die”, wrote Alfred Lord Tennyson, “or the world would grow moldy, would only breed the past again.”
When people die, those who love them feel the loss deeply. The longer you have someone in your life that you really love, the deeper the roots go into your heart and the more painful is the experience of having those roots pulled up. Whilst we all know that grief is a normal part of life , and believers do not grieve “as others who have no hope” – 1 Thess 4:13, we also are aware that death is still very much an enemy.
An enemy that slides in and robs us of someone dear, and we feel the pain for a long time.
This is the sixth time we find this wonderful man of God, Joseph weeping and it was not a quiet affair. It says that Joseph “fell upon” his father as he had done Benjamin and his brothers at their family reunion – Genesis 45: 14 – 15.
The people of Israel are not ashamed to express their emotions openly; and we find Joseph not being restricted by his position or the office he held in Egypt. Nothing would smother his true feelings of grief. Later, when the funeral cortege approached Canaan, Joseph led his people in a week of public mourning for Jacob – Genesis 50: 10 “Then they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, and they mourned there with a great and very solemn lamentation. He observed seven days of mourning for his father.”
When somebody we love dies, God expects us to weep. That is why precisely He has given us the ability to shed tears. Normal tears are part of the healing process – Psalm 30:5 “Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning.” – Whilst abnormal grief only keeps the wounds open and prolongs the pain.
The Anglican poet and pastor, John Keble called tears, “the best gift of God to suffering man.”