The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces. Isaiah 25:8
The Tears
Tears of grief are an extraordinary gift of God. The more researchers have studied tears of grief, the more extraordinary we recognize them to be. When someone close to you dies, your brain undergoes trauma. After all, up to this moment the wiring of your brain has included this person in the very fabric of your life. Death tears that piece of fabric away.
To help deal with such trauma, God equipped your body to shed tears of grief. These tears arise for a very different reason from the tears you shed when, for instance, you get a bit of sawdust in your eye. Scientists are still learning exactly how emotional crying affects the body, but it appears to be connected with the body’s natural response to stress and emotional pain. Crying can be part of the process by which the body gradually settles after intense distress. It’s no accident, therefore, that individuals grappling with grief often report feeling calmer or experiencing a measure of relief after they’ve had “a good cry.”
As helpful as tears of grief are, however, the Lord gives us far more than a temporary fix. He addresses death itself – the cause of our grief. He points us ahead to the moment when there will be “no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain” (Revelation 21:4).
Enter Jesus. He is the one who, according to Isaiah, “has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). God the Son became one of us. He lived among us. He wept with us. And through it all, he lived a life of perfect faithfulness on our behalf. Then he set his sights on the very cause of death. He set his sights on our sin. He took up our sin. He carried our sin to the cross. And through his suffering and death, he paid for our sin in full.
And now he lives. And because he does, the tears of our grief are temporary. Eternal life awaits. The tears of grief will soon give way to the tears of joy.
Prayer:
In my tears of grief, Lord, remind me that they will not last. Eternal joy awaits. Amen.
