My Tears Count For Something

Many years ago I bought this silver necklace - a tear being sealed in a bottle. With it was a card with Psalm 56:8 printed on it:

Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? 

If you had to guess, how many of your tears do you think are in God’s bottle? If He is holding on to every tear you’ve ever shed, how many are in that bottle - multiplied by everyone who has ever lived and cried? Our finite minds can’t being to comprehend the number of our own tears He’s kept, let alone every human ever.

 God is intimately familiar with tears. So familiar that He can pull each one out of His bottle and tell you exactly where and when it was shed. He can tell you your heart when you shed it. That’s the beauty and blessing of an all-seeing, all-knowing Lord.

God has been familiar with tears since the beginning of human history. We can’t read through Scripture without seeing rivers and oceans of tears being shed. The Bible is not a book for the faint of heart. It is epically sad and heartbreaking as we look at all the tears cried and recorded.

The people of Israel cried.
Hannah cried.
Elijah cried.
Hezekiah cried.
Esther cried.
Job cried.
David cried.
Isaiah cried.
Jeremiah cried.
Peter cried.
Paul cried.
And, perhaps most importantly, Jesus cried.

All those tears. We know their stories. We’ve read them time and again. We know their pain, their loss, their heartache, their unfulfilled dreams and desires. We can relate to some of those tears because we’ve shed some of our own for the same reasons. Tear after tear flowing to the footstool of our Heavenly Father.

But here’s the best part: those tears never go to waste. They don’t drain off or out or under. They are lovingly and gently picked up - every last one of them - and placed in God’s bottle. There they are tenderly kept, each with a memory attached to them.

And there is coming a day when all those tears will be wiped away forever.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. Revelation 21:4

What a beautiful reminder that the best is yet to come! Death, sorrow, crying and pain may last for a night, but joy is coming in the morning! For now, we take comfort in knowing that our tears of pain and hurt and grief are well taken care of by our Heavenly Father. He knows our heartaches, and He calls us to Him for peace in the trials and joy for the journey.

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