A Flood of Tears

When God sent the flood to wipe out all life that wasn’t on Noah’s Ark, this is usually interpreted as a sign of God’s wrath. However, we learn in Moses 7 that right before the flood, Enoch witnesses God weep. The Creator of Heaven and Earth, worlds without end, was so sorrowful that He wept, and so too, did the heavens and the earth weep for forty days and forty nights. The flood was never about God’s wrath but about His sorrow. God had to watch the workmanship of His own hands, His own children, fall from grace and choose evil over good, hate over love. He watched them consciously choose to make their own lives and the world around them worse, for no better reason than their pride and their resentment and their bitterness of soul. He had given them life, the freedom to choose for themselves, and knowledge of the Gospel so that they might know the way that would lead to more happiness and peace and love, and again and again they rejected their Creator and everything He stood for. God takes no pleasure in smiting the wicked. He does not crow in righteous anger when the bad guys finally get their comeuppance. He feels nothing but sorrow when He watches His children sprint headlong into the brick wall that is the consequences of their action. God feels so much pain witnessing the ruinous effects that sin has on us that He chose the lesser pain of sacrificing His Well Beloved and Only Begotten Son to an Infinite amount of pain so that not only could we be redeemed but that His whole plan would not be ruined. I think it is important to remember that while we may see it as nothing but wrath when we slam into the consequences of our action, it gives only pain and sorrow to our Heavenly Father to see us in this state. God didn’t smite the earth with His fist but flooded it with His tears.