‘Cry me a river’ they say, but G-d, He cried the world.
I remember quite a few years ago when a family member passed. He was probably in his fifties and left behind a young widow and a large family of orphans. The funeral was on a Friday morning in Israel. And as the family reached the gravesite the thick clouds in the sky gave way and released a mighty downpour. I’ll never forget the way the children described the scene later, “the heavens were crying along with us,” they said.
I was certain that they were.
I remember on another occasion when my mother became very emotional. My brother and I tried to console her, it was hard to see our mother this way. She looked us both in the eyes and said in a way that taught me something that has stayed with me forever, “sometimes it’s ok to cry”.
G-d created the world. It was perfect. It was beautiful. It was just as He had so desired. But then things started to happen. There were bad things. People were killing and stealing and fighting. They were mean and selfish and self centered.
G-d begged them to repent, to turn His world perfect. To make it as beautiful as His dream had always been. But alas, this was not meant to be.
And he started to cry. Indeed, he cried the world.
And when he was all done, He sent a dove. The dove said, ‘sometimes it’s ok to cry’.
Then came the rainbow. A real storm is always followed by the rainbow.
The rainbow that follows the storm is the most beautiful rainbow you’ll ever see. It’s the miracle after the tragedy.
It’s the perfection within the imperfection. It’s the strength that we never knew we had. The courage we were never aware that we were capable of. The love that surrounds us that we’ve never tapped into.
When G-d exiled the Jewish people, he didn’t say as any good parent would ‘trust me this hurts me more than it hurts you.’ He said, ‘I’m exiling you, I’m thrusting you into pain and suffering and misery, but don’t worry, my child, I too am going along. Wherever you go I will be right there beside you and any hardships that you endure, I too will endure along with you.’
We all have weathered storms, some of larger proportions than others. They are the toughest parts of our life.
But the knowledge that we are not in this alone, that G-d is at our side, giving us the strength to push through and persevere also gives us the courage to see the rainbow. The glimmer at the end of the storm, that light at the other end of the tunnel.
It’s hard to let go of that perfect world. Of that dream of the way we’d always imagined it to be, the way that we would like it to be. But sometimes, this is just what we need to do. Let go.
It’s ok to cry, but be sure not to miss the rainbow.
This week, Israel suffered a terrible tragedy. The murder of a three month old baby by a Palestinian terrorist who plowed his car straight through pedestrians. This news was only exacerbated by the fact that it took her parents five years to finally conceive their princess.
The funeral was heart wrenching and world Jewry cried along with them.
Buckets of tears from mothers and fathers everywhere.
G-d can’t blame us. He knows how it feels, after all, He did it too.