Week Four | Woman Against the Wall

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Week Four | Jesus & Women Online Book Study
Reading Assignment – Session Four
Scripture Passage: Luke 7:44-48
Listen to the Audio version | Read time 7-minutes

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Hiding my emotions has always been a challenge for me. Tears have a way of escaping from my eyes no matter how hard I try to hold them back. 

Sometimes tears on their own are okay because they’re easily wiped away.  But when the tears bring with them all of the other stuff that just seems to pour from every area of our faces, it can be embarrassing. So I try to hide the ugly cries. 

Jesus and the Woman Against the Wall

Can you imagine how in Luke 7:36-50, the woman against the wall must have felt when she started to cry?

“…so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfume on them.”
Luke 7:37-38, NIV

I wonder if she thought about hiding her face and running out the door. Yet she seemed determined to complete what she came to do and anoint Jesus’ feet. 

I sympathize with her not being able to hold back or hide her tears. At the same time, I want to cheer for her and say, “well done”. I also want to thank her because she showed us it is okay to cry with Jesus. 

Kristi mentioned in video session 4 that the few tears falling from this woman’s eyes more than likely turned to a full-fledged sob, hair down, and drippy, sticky-gross point of losing it. Amazingly, Jesus didn’t pull away from her disgusted. He saw the beauty in her loving anointing.  

If He did that for her we can rest assured that He’ll do the same for us.

Jesus is not embarrassed by our tears or even our snot. It doesn’t surprise Him or gross Him out to see us with red leaking eyes and noses with open sobbing frowns. He can handle it.

“We can pour our whole hearts out to Jesus. We can leave it all before Him. We can cast it all upon Him. He can take it, and He wants to take it.”

kristi mclellend, jesus and women study, page 77

God, in His amazing design and attention to detail, created us with the ability to release our emotions and the chemicals building up within us.  He sees great value and beauty in something as small as our tears.  

Did you know that tears from our different emotions such as laughter, anger, pain, and sadness have different chemical components and structurally look different under a microscope?

We don’t have to hide our tears from Jesus because He sees more beauty in them than we can ever imagine.

“They are precious to God. They are worth recognizing, and they are worth keeping. They are worth storing up because of the One who can handle all our tears. The One who can hold all of our sadness, grief, sorrow, hurt, and pain can handle it. He can take it.”

kristi mclelland, jesus and women study, page 76

Let’s recap…

Today we learned:
– Jesus is not embarrassed or grossed out by our messy crying
– Jesus can handle our most extreme emotions
– Our tears have value and beauty symbolically and scientifically
– We don’t have to be embarrassed by our tears, as they are beautiful to God

ANSWER THIS IN THE COMMENTS:
Kristi McLelland asks on page 72 of Jesus and Women:
When was the last time you really allowed yourself to just pour out your heart to Jesus? Is there something that keeps you from pouring your heart out to Him? How can you fight against that obstacle?