#5 - The Gift of Tears

Thou tellest my wanderings, put thou my tears in Thy bottle; are they not in Thy Book? (Psalm  56:8)

Years ago, my son Phil broke his wrist. He was about ten or eleven, and after enduring eight hours in ER, his pinched face whitened at the slightest touch to his casted arm. "Do you need to cry?" I asked while trying to settle him in for the night and get his arm  elevated. 

"Tears are actually a gift from God," I explained, telling him that tears contain proteins that release pain-numbing endorphins. He looked at me gratefully and a long breath escaped, full of tears. 

Recently a friend received bad news. She, too, was reticent to cry. Perhaps my son thought tears "unmanly." But my friend felt that her tears expressed a lack of faith, a failure to "praise God in all things." Yet did not King David weep?

For 3,000 years people have actually been catching tears in small containers called tear bottles or lachrymatory. In these little vials, heart-broken people stored their tears of grief and pain, mourning, loneliness, and loss. Ancient Romans put their tear catchers into burial tombs to show love and respect. Victorian England used tear catchers at funerals. American history references Civil War women catching tears and saving them in tear catchers for when their husbands, fathers, or sons returned. Today funeral homes have begun selling these reminders of antiquity as symbols for universal grief and pain. 

Ancient Stone Tear Catchers

When King David wept, he referenced these tear catchers. "Thou tellest my wandering, put thou my tears in Thy bottle," he wrote in Psalm 56:8, adding, "Are they not in Thy book?" implying that God keeps track of our pain and suffering, that He remembers and records our sadness. 

Years ago my son needed to cry to take advantage of the pain-numbing properties God gives us through our tears. Today, my friend needs to cry as well. Her tears are a gift. They hold healing properties--and God collects them, putting each one into His tear catcher,  writing them all down in His book.

O God, Thank You for the precious gift of tears, and that You catch and record each one.