You have kept count of my tossing, put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book? Psalm 56:8
Have you shed silent tears this week? Or perhaps your grief was messy and loud—a full on “ugly-cry.” Or maybe your grief has been too deep for tears, but rather has been a hidden, yet bone-deep, ache of the soul.
However we express our pain and grief, know this: God sees, God hears, and God deeply cares when we are hurting.
Psalm 56:8 says, “You have kept count of my tossing, put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?”
I had no idea that collecting tears in a bottle was a real life custom. Ancient cultures would collect the tears of those mourning a loved one and save them in tiny glass bottles. It was a way of memorializing the hurt—of saying this happened, and this mattered.
No one knows if David might have been alluding to this custom when he wrote Psalm 56. But we do know that our tears matter to God. Our grief, our hurt, our loss, our utter despair—God keeps track of it all. Sometimes that’s all we long for. We just want someone to understand our pain and sit in it with us.
Friend, we have that and more in God, for He makes a promise to all who have placed their faith in Jesus. Not only does God remember our tears, but one day, “He will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
I am praying for you today. Father, comfort this beautiful soul. As her tears fall, give her the gift of your comfort and love, the reassurance that You see and hear her, and the peace that comes from knowing you will one day redeem each tear.
Until next time,
Shelby
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