I love what David wrote when he was talking to God in Psalm 56:8. The New Living Translation words it like this:
“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.” (Emphasis mine)
I love how this messes with us no matter how we view pain and suffering.
For some who want to believe the false narrative that following Jesus is all about peace, prosperity, rainbows, and candy that won’t make you gain weight, this is a stark reminder that there will be tears. In fact, this Psalm was written by David about the time he had been taken prisoner by the Philistines. And that happened a good bit after David had already killed Goliath and defeated the Philistines.
The point is that it isn’t all peace and prosperity from an earthly viewpoint. There are tears, and if you haven’t cried any or many, then you simply haven’t lived long enough. While I hate to be the bearer of that news, it does set up the better news.
There is One Who sees those tears and collects them!
This messes with the “suck it up, Buttercup!” believers who think that faithfulness to God is grinding out this life in stubborn obedience. They tend to be miserable and stoic about it because the higher the misery index, the greater their perceived faithfulness.
The first group of people never let their babies cry themselves to sleep while the second group never picks their babies up as they cry in the crib.
[Tweet “Because God values our pain, there is value in our pain.”]Both have good intentions based on half-truths, but both miss the point that can make us whole: because God values our pain, there is value in our pain. We don’t need to minimize it or maximize it. We need to allow God — and others — to empathize with it so that we won’t agonize over it alone.
“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.” (Matthew 10:29 NIV, emphasis mine)
The point that Jesus is making is that we are cared for by the Father. We want to camp out on the part where sparrows won’t fall to the ground, but that isn’t what Jesus was saying. He was saying they’d never fall to the ground outside the Father’s watch.
Have you fallen? Are you on the ground right now wondering what happened? Does the victory over Goliath seem so long ago that you wonder if it even happened at all? Take heart and know that you haven’t fallen outside your Father’s care. He sees you and is collecting your tears in a bottle. He isn’t doing it because He loves your pain. He’s doing it because He loves you, and He has plans to repurpose those tears in the chapters of your life that are yet to be written.
