By Rev’d Jon Swales
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.