HE BOTTLES YOUR TEARS

Transcript

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Hello everyone. This is Pastor Dean Thompson with the word of hope. Thou tellest my wanderings. Put thou my tears into thy bottle. Are they not in thy book? There are tears no one sees. Tears wept into a pillow at two tears blinked back at the stoplight. Tears that come unbeaten in the produce aisle of the supermarket, when a song from a different chapter of your life plays over the speakers. David, hiding from Saul among the Philistines, feels what every haunted, weary, grieving soul feels, that the cost is being absorbed alone, and he says something startling. Tell my wanderings, the verb saffar means to count, to recomment, to enumerate. David says God keeps a careful tally of every step he has taken in his exile. Not one displaced footfall has gone unnoticed. Put my tears into thy bottle. The Hebrew word here is nod, a leather skin skin used in the ancient Near East to hold precious liquids. Some of the older common commentators point us to the practice attested in Roman archaeology, though not certainly in David, David's Israel, of tear bottles, in which mourners would collect their tears and place them in a tomb as a witness to the love behind the grief. Whether or not David had this exact custom in mind, the picture he paints is searing. My tears matter so much to God that he preserves them. Are they not in thy book? The verb safer book scroll is the same route as saffar count. David has moved from a book of footsteps to a book of tears. God writes both volumes. Spursion said Our tears are quick prayers, and our God puts them in his verse as remembrances of our sorrows. Charles Hodge, the great prince and theologian, used to remind grieving families that no tear shed by a believer is forgotten by God. Augustine wrote in his confessions about his mother Monica's tears for him during his years of rebellion. The son of these tears could not perish. God had counted everyone. We do not weep into a void. Our griefs are not lost on the wind. The God who told Hagar in the wilderness, Thou God seest me. Genesis 16, verse 13, still weeps. The Christ who wept at Lazarus, Lazarus' grave, still feels. And there is coming a day when God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. Revelation 21 verse 4. And the one whose hand wipes them is the very one who has been collecting them all along. He has not forgotten that you have wept. The same hand that bottles them today will dry them tomorrow. You are not invisible, you are not unimportant. He counts, he keeps, and he cares. Oh God, every tear has been numbered. We are happy to know you care so much about us that you even collect our tears. Comfort us with the truth that nothing about our grief is lost on you. And you will give us comfort and you will give us strength. You will give us grace to carry on. Amen. God bless you, brothers and sisters.