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