Our Tears Form Us and Our Sorrows Catechize Us
The exhortation we receive in Scripture to rejoice always does not nullify our sadness. God does not ask of us that we be sub-or-super-human. He asks us to be human in the same way his Son was, feeling the same feelings he felt, and being stirred to tears by the same things that stirred him. Our sadness is not a threat to God, nor is it a threat to our own sanctification. Our sadness paves a way for hope; it bolsters us to participate in a true joy that moves us beyond mere happiness or superficial sorrows. It is in our sadness that we are joined to Jesus. It is our tears along with his that flow into a stream of life.
It is in Jesus that we feel a solidarity stronger than the grave and fiercer than suffering. It is in him we hope, and with the future resurrection we long. Through the tears we weep alongside him, we are given an opportunity to use our tears, to squeeze those moments for all they have to offer. We are allowed to cry, to feel what we feel, to suffer and to ask “why?” because of the bodily life of Jesus. We are allowed to be at peace with the fact that we have human emotions because Jesus had them too. And as Jesus died, resurrected, was glorified, and now looks ahead toward the marriage supper of the Lamb and his bride, we too have an opportunity to have hope in our strife as we await a day when all that is crooked will be made straight. Through our tears we are offered the clarity of sight to see Jesus’s hand extended to us as an invitation toward wholeness in him.
The Promise of Tears
There is a promise in our tears—a promise of redemption and resurrection. As we make room for our sorrow and sadness, God prepares us as citizens of his kingdom, and Jesus holds space for us as co-heirs to God’s glorious riches. Our sorrows are not an obstacle to faith in God and hope in his promises. Rather, they act as a bridge to Jesus who has felt all we feel and has an end-game in mind for our tears.
“Our sorrows are not an obstacle to faith in God and hope in his promises. ”
Revelation promises believers many things, among the most prolific of which is newness. John writes, “And He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” This chapter bears witness to the realness of our tears and through it we are gifted a taste of what it will be like when Christ makes all things new. Namely, we are shown that Christ will minister to our tears one last time, in finality, wiping them away forever.
All of the suffering, all of the sin, all of the shame for which our tears have surfaced in this life will be momentously and gently, firmly and softly, wiped away. Each moment in our lives that has contributed to the bottle of tears he holds will fade as God tenderly and kindly lets our tears pass away along with the old earth. In this life, God has counted and kept our tears. In the next, we are promised an acknowledgment of them but are guaranteed an impermanence of them.
“Our sobs take up our cause today, but tomorrow Christ will take up our cause one last time before ushering us into the eternal city of God. ”
Christ will bind up our ducts for good. This is a loud and apparent hope in our tears: they matter, but they will not last forevermore. They serve us today, but they will be useless in eternity. This is yet another tension of which we learn to balance—our weeping is for today and not for tomorrow. Our cries are necessary for today but not for tomorrow. Our sobs take up our cause today, but tomorrow Christ will take up our cause one last time before ushering us into the eternal city of God.
Our tears are temporal, but they establish us. They plant us firmly in the footsteps of Christ. They provide opportunity for prayer through the Holy Spirit. They teach us to be held by the Father.
God has caught our tears, and we have a promise that he has counted them, and now a more consoling promise appears: they are not permanent. That which plagues us today will not survive into our eternal tomorrow. That which haunts, bedevils, and injures us today will not continue. The glories of the Lord will eclipse what we know as today, and tomorrow will be filled with a firm and eternal joy.
The Hope of Tears
There is a finality to our tears. What caused sorrow in this life is not permanent. Those things which pressed anxiety and fear firmly in our being will not survive. Those things over which we have cried, the sin and the sadness, will be expunged along with the tears that represent them. The erasing of our tears, inaugurated by Jesus’s hand wiping them from our sore eyes, will speak to the extinction of brokenness forevermore. The tears and what they represent will be gone.
As modern saints we are given a privilege of seeing the unfolding of the lives of saints in ages past. We know the Red Sea tore to make a path of dry ground, that Elijah was swept up to heaven by a fiery chariot, that Daniel survived the lion’s den. We know that Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego walked into the furnace knowing God could save them and also could choose not to.
We know Jesus was brutalized but remained obedient. We know he was forsaken by the Father on the cross as he died. We know he had victory over the grave. We know because of his victory, we are offered a resurrection too.
We are hemmed in by hope on both sides. Because of the solidarity we have in Christ’s own suffering and the promise we have that tears will one day be wiped away, we can store up strength and joy for today. Should today bring weeping and grief we are given permission to draw from the joy of tomorrow and yesterday. Behind us we have the consolation of Christ, and before us we have the promised extinction of tears.
This hope is sturdy. This joy, robust.
This excerpt is used with permission from the recently released With Those Who Weep: A Theology of Tears by S.A. Morrison, the latest book release from Gospel-Centered Discipleship.
S.A. Morrison married her college sweetheart and has had the delight of partnering with her husband in ministry for the last ten years. Together, they have walked through troubled waters, being baptized in them. She and her husband welcomed their first child in 2020. She blogs regularly at her blog writeful.