Feb 2–8
The God Who Weeps
📖 Moses 7
Moses 7: What Enoch Saw When God Wept
Enoch had seen a lot by the time we reach Moses 7. Valleys raised, mountains fleeing, rivers diverted. He'd watched armies stop cold. He'd built a city that the scriptures call Zion. His faith had moved literal mountains.
And then he saw God cry.
Moses 7:28: "And it came to pass that the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept; and Enoch bore record of it, saying: How is it that the heavens weep, and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains?"
The question is real. Enoch is confused. He knew God as a being of power—"the Lord stretched forth his hand and touched the hills and they shook" (Moses 7:3). Power and weeping don't compute for him. Not at first.
So he asks.
The Theology of Divine Grief
God's answer in Moses 7:29–40 is one of the most remarkable doctrinal passages in the entire Pearl of Great Price.
God explains. These are His children. They were given their agency. Satan has become their father—they love the misery he peddles. They have refused to receive the Beloved Son He sent. And they have chosen suffering that God cannot, without violating their agency, simply remove.
Moses 7:33: "And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood."
Without affection. God is describing something He finds painful in a personal way. Not merely the violation of divine law. The break of a family relationship. Children who have forgotten—or refused—to recognize their Father.
The Latter-day Saint understanding of God is distinctive here and worth dwelling on. God is not the unmoved mover of Aristotelian philosophy, impassible and beyond emotion. The God of the Restoration has feelings. He can grieve. He weeps for His children the way a parent weeps when a child walks away and chooses badly.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught in April 2016 that God's perfect love means He is never indifferent. "He is not the absentee Father of some distant cosmic design." He is present, engaged, and moved.
Enoch encounters this and weeps too. He weeps "and cried unto the Lord, saying: When shall the earth rest?" (Moses 7:58). He's absorbed the grief. It's become his grief too.
That's what happens when you spend enough time learning to love what God loves.
The City and the Pattern
Moses 7 describes the culmination of Enoch's mission: "And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them" (Moses 7:18).
No poor among them. Four words that carry the full weight of the United Order, of welfare programs, of Bishop's storehouses, of fast offerings, of everything the Church has built to address temporal need. Zion is not primarily a geographic location. It's an economic and spiritual condition.
President Russell M. Nelson said in 2023 that building Zion is among the most important work of our dispensation. He specifically connected it to becoming "of one heart and one mind"—a unity that goes deeper than agreeing on a budget or a meeting schedule. It's a unity of will, of purpose, of love.
Enoch didn't build Zion by organizing committees. He built it by building individuals. He preached. He wept over the same things God wept over. His people, eventually, shared his heart. One by one, they became what Zion required.
That city was taken. Translated. Preserved.
Moses 7:21: "And the Lord said unto Enoch: Behold mine abode forever."
The Promise Enoch Pried Loose
Enoch, having absorbed God's grief, uses that intimacy to ask for something.
Moses 7:48–49: "And it came to pass that Enoch looked upon the earth; and he heard a voice from the bowels thereof, saying: Wo, wo is me, the mother of men; I am pained, I am weary, because of the wickedness of my children."
Even the earth is mourning. Enoch weeps again—for the earth, for its children.
Then he prays. He asks God to have mercy on Noah's residue (Moses 7:50). He asks God not to utterly destroy His children. He intercedes.
And God grants it.
Moses 7:60: "And the Lord said unto Enoch: As I live, even so will I come in the last days... righteousness will I send down out of heaven; and truth will I send forth out of the earth."
Truth from the earth. Many Latter-day Saint scholars have identified this as a prophecy of the restoration of the gospel through the Book of Mormon—a record literally brought forth from the ground.
Enoch wrestled with God. Not in rebellion but in love. He had absorbed enough of God's heart to know what to ask for—and he asked.
This is what an active prayer life looks like at its fullest: not asking for our convenience, but learning to want what God wants, and then asking with that alignment.
📔 Journal
Enoch's confusion—"how is it that the heavens weep?"—is resolved through God's own explanation. When have you been surprised by God's emotional investment in something or someone you thought He might be indifferent to? What did that reveal about who God actually is?
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Sign In Free📔 Journal
Zion requires "one heart and one mind, and no poor among them." Pick the hardest one of those three conditions. What would it cost you, personally, to help build that condition in your family, your ward, or your neighborhood?
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Sign In Free📔 Journal
Enoch absorbed God's grief until it became his own—then used that shared grief as the foundation for intercession. Who are you grieving for right now? What does it look like to take that grief into prayer the way Enoch did?
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Sign In FreeOpen Your Come Follow Me Manual
The manual this week asks: "What does Zion look like in your home?" Don't answer that too quickly. Sit with the gap between "one heart and one mind" and where you actually are. The gap isn't a verdict. It's an invitation.