Tears Are Our Friends

It seemed as if there were a certain number of tears that I needed to cry each day perhaps a differing amount on any given day. If I didn't cry them, I slowly started feeling heavy laden and sluggish. The fog of grief would set in and I often found myself becoming numb and dumb. You know, just stumbling around in a kind of daze. All I know is that we need to let the tears keep flowing, as long as they are welling up from within.

Tears release something from our hearts to His. Into the resulting opening of our spirit, He pours divine sympathy, compassion, subtle comfort, release, peace, and renewed hope. In small measures or large. In ways that can be sensed and no doubt in many ways we are not aware of at all. We empty out the tears, often in a torrent; He eases in the subtle refreshing.

Tears are His graced means for healing broken hearts, and over the millennia He has had to lead many people through them. Jesus knows it well. His own heart has had to travel that path times beyond knowing: He is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). Make no mistake about this: Jesus is in charge of the process, no matter what we may mistakenly do to derail it. That is why grieving seems to have a life of its own and works itself out by its own inner wisdom, uniquely suited to each individual. The Lord patiently and persistently brings one thing up after another, until we relent and work with it the right way. We can cooperate with the process, or we can resist the One whose Hand is guiding it.

Cooperating with Tears

One of our best and easiest ways of cooperating is by giving God our tears. Tears keep the river of grief running smooth and clear, unblocked by contaminants, and filled with hope. They are themselves liquid prayers.I want to credit that lovely phrase to Watchman Nee, the great Chinese pastor of the last century, though I have never been able to track it down. June was especially captured by the image and cherished it, as I do now.

Pastor Nee pointed out that tears are of an entirely different composition from sweat, which often enough reminds us how we labor so fruitlessly under the curse of Adam's fall. Tears, however, are entirely redemptive. They are the visual expression of our heart crying out its burden to God. And our tender-hearted Lord says that He listens to them all, then captures our tears and keeps them in a bottle not a syllable is ever lost!

St. Augustine wrote in his Confessions that his mother Monica cried and wept for his conversion for years. Once, when entreating a bishop to pray for her unsaved son, the good man said, Madame, if God hasn't listened to your tears, why would He listen to my prayers? In fact, God did listen to her tears, and through them gave the church the greatest theologian of its first thousand years (after Paul), someone who knew the extravagant mercy of the Lord so personally and so well, that his writings reset the whole tone of Western Christianity to the priority of grace.

It is grace that gives tears their power. We cry out in our helpless frustration over what we cannot change. We weep from a deep well-spring of sorrow we cannot shut down. We wail in rage over a cruel, unbending injustice we cannot correct. In all this, tears are the emblem of our weakness, of our lamentable inability to right the wrongs we suffer. They would only deepen our shame if we didn't have heaven's perspective to go by. Jesus told Paul that in our weakness, God's strengths are perfected. Tears are the chosen means by which His strong arm will work to overturn our misfortune: Those who sow with tears shall reap with shouts of joy (Psalm 126:5).

Empowered by Grace

Already the thought of tears has moved me from sorrow to praise. You will have to forgive me if you're not ready for that shout of joy yet and don't even want to hear it mentioned. I well remember the feeling. The loss of a great love is way too big for us to move it out of our hearts at once. So, it happens day by day, sometimes moment by moment. The temptation is to mistakenly think that you are caught in a cycle. That the grieving is going nowhere. That the same tears are being shed time and time again to no purpose. Yet, the unseen reality is that we are truly being led somewhere, though it is as if by stealth, so small a part do we have to play in it. The Man of Sorrows leads his people through their weeping to a place of rebirth on the other side of the Valley of Tears (Psalm 84:6). That's grace.

It helps our tears to flow in the right direction if we believe that Jesus has drawn near. Who wants to weep to an empty universe? I would sometimes place an empty chair opposite mine and imagine that the Lord was filling it, listening to my tears. You may not sense His presence, especially if you haven't removed the contaminants. Nevertheless, we can be sure that He dwells with the brokenhearted for He has pledged that to us in His Word (Isaiah 57:15).

What's needed most is faith, not feelings. If you don't feel or sense His presence, stretch your faith to believe that His truth really is the Truth. Find the scriptures you need to hang on to and repeat them until you believe them. One cannot say this enough: It is by believing the truth that we are made free, not by feeling feelings. Trying hard to gain feelings, such as sensing the Lord's presence, leads to frustration. Believing the truth leads to peace and release.

Happily, there is a God, a kind and compassionate Father who has blessed our tears as His graced means of healing us. Jesus said emphatically: Blessed [how happy, how highly favored] are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted (Matthew 5:4). The blessing Jesus pronounced is upon those who mourn those who give God their tears. Tears not only release the secret prayer of our hearts, but they make a way for God's comfort to come. Part of that comfort is knowing that He Himself weeps with those who weep. He knows our sorrows well and does not hesitate to share in them with us.

Prayer

Dear Jesus, help me see by faith that You are right here with me, weeping as I weep, and gathering my tears into Your bottle. May I never withhold my tears from You! Help me deeply believe this wonderful truth that my tears are liquid prayers. I do believe that You listen to them with great affection and answer them with great power. From now on, I will always cry my tears in Your direction!

Scripture

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Isaiah 53:3

Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! Psalm 126:5

As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion. Psalm 84:6-7

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite. Isaiah 57:15

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Matthew 5:4

All scripture citations are from the English Standard Version (ESV) unless otherwise noted.