For me, this was perhaps the most important realization of my life. I grew up with pain all around me, and even at a young age, I experienced grief and sorrow like nobody's business.

But this:

Our creator is, at heart, a deeply sorrowful father. He isn't some distant, aloof, intellectual being, neither is he an angry judge, a scornful tyrant.

When Adam and Eve fell, it was like a death blow to God's heart. He knew it was possible (which is why he gave the commandment and the warning in it), but he never really imagined they would make that choice.

Since then, God has been grieving for humanity, lost, suffering, wandering. While God has had to take responsibility for his children, who should have been responsible in the first place, he has had to carry the burden of grief and sorrow alone, all the while working and investing tears and blood to liberate his children from His enemy, the one who stole his children's lives.

There is a reason why the depictions of Jesus from Catholic traditions show him with a heart aflame but surrounded by thorns. Jesus was a man of tears. IT's often not highlighted, because mostly, in modern tradition, we focus on the salvation which is so wonderful, but the scriptures tell the story of a man who wept in numerous occasions, grieving at the suffering he saw (or foresaw) around him.

The point is this: If you can realize and understand that the hurt you feel, the pain you feel looking at all the suffering and difficulties of those around you, if you can understand that this is in fact a reflection of God's own heart, and you can connect to that heart, you will be able to discover a profound connection with Him that rises above all the grief and sorrow. When you pray, you will find that you shed tears grieving for your friends, your country, for humanity, and you'll learn that those tears are in fact God's tears.

And when you shed tears on God's behalf, you will also find the comfort and release from grief that follows afterwards. Prayer at that level can never be forgotten.

Many believers gratefully give their grief to God and Jesus, and yes, that's where it needs to start. But there is one step further we can go. To experience and release the grief that God and Jesus carry everyday, as they fight to liberate humanity, to win our hearts, to inspire faith so that we can truly be rescued.

When you finally see the world through God's eyes, you will experience the deepest sorrow, but also the most profound repentance and the greatest gratitude.

He knows our hearts. We need to learn His, too.

Be well.

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me."