Station 8 - The Daughters of Jerusalem

photo by Jim Forest / flickr

"A great crowd followed him,

including women

who beat their breasts

and lamented over him."

         --Luke 23.27



Jesus slowly rises from his second fall. 

He shakes and trembles 
from the burden of the cross...
the weight of it all. 

And he hears a weeping as only the Eastern women can weep. It is really a lamentation. 

These are not Jesus' enemies--but they are part of that little handful
that have followed him through it all. 

The birth--painful and bloody...
old watery-eyed Anna who saw what others did not see...
Simon's mother-in-law...
that day in Nain when he told the mother weeping for her dead son: 
"Do not weep"...
the women with the flask of ointment...
Mary Magdalene...
the sick women with that issue of blood. 
These are  only part of the daughters of Jerusalem.

We do not know their names --those who stood in the crowd weeping.

But Jesus saw them.
Perhaps he knew them by name these daughters of Jerusalem.

They will be there until the end.
Long after all the others have fled.

And he tenderly rebukes them:
"Do not weep for me...but weep for yourselves
and for your children. 
Daughters, turn your tears to your own pain.
All the pain the world has brought. 

Turn your tears to your children and everybody's children."
Maybe, just maybe if we look deep in our hearts...
and turn toward the world he loved so much--
this troubled world just might be a better place.

He didn't say change it. He did say weep for it all.
For maybe in the weepings for so much out there--
the harsh, troubled world 
will see the tears and the love and caring behind them.

Do not dismiss these daughters of Jerusalem 
for their tears, like the rain, bring hope and health
to so many. 

And maybe, just maybe they and we will find that old rugged cross 
is not the last word after all.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com