Tuesday 31 December 2013

God keeps a tear-bottle!

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(J.R. Miller, "Evening Thoughts" 1907)

"Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?" Psalm 56:8

Tears are sacred in God's sight. The Psalmist said that God keeps a tear-bottle, into which He puts the tears of His people. This means that God in Heaven hears the plashing of earth's tears. It means that His people's sorrows are sacred to Him, that He cherishes them, keeping them as memorials.

Our tears are precious to God, also, because in our sorrow He brings to us blessings which we never could receive but for our sorrow. One of our Lord's Beatitudes is for the sorrowing: "Blessed are those who mourn." It seems strange to us that mourning ones should be put among the blessed or happy ones. The reason is, because only those who suffer can get God's comfort, and this is such a blessing that it is worth while to have sorrow just to receive it.

God holds the tears of penitence as most sacred. Those who weep over their sins, cause joy in Heaven.

"And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment." Luke 7:37-38

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