He just cried with me

I am dirty.

I am beaten.

I am sin-soaked.

I am broken.

My picture is painted,

with brush in my hand.

I, from sin to sin

continue to push.

Each one

with one more stroke of the brush.

I laid broken on the floor;

crying myself to sleep.

I screamed aloud of my own disgrace

to a God I cannot see.

Then into my broken emptiness

enters Jesus Christ.

His tear-filled eyes look straight through me;

through my thin disguise.

Then He did something

I would have never dreamed.

He wrapped his arms around me tight and…

He just cried with me.

He just cried with me.

He didn’t say a word.

He just cried with me,

and though it may sound absurd,

He knows my pain and he feels my hurt.

That’s what a savior is for.

He just cried with me.

How could I really be forgiven?

I’ve done my share of sinful deeds.

Do I pretend I’m a believer

when I pretend to believe?

I’m so afraid of failure.

Yet it appears so inevitable.

And that makes it hard to accept

a grace; amazing and incredible.

I crouch with sin-soaked hands

and a heavy heart crying aloud.

The empty tears fall from my eyes

into the puddle on the ground.

Dirty and beaten, I cry.

Jesus, before me stands.

“Look away,” I say through my tears,

“for I have sin-soaked hands.”

Then he did something

I would have never dreamed.

He wrapped his arms around me tight and…

He just cried with me.

I ask him why he loves me;

why he won’t just put me in my place.

“My child,” he says, “You must let go of guilt

To take a hold of grace.”

Though its hard to understand,

though its hard to believe,

I knew I was forgiven when…

He just cried with me.

“The Good News of the gospel of grace cries out: we are all, equally, privileged, but unentitled beggars at the door of God’s mercy.”

- Brennan Manning