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Not All Tears Are Equal
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Not all tears are equal, and
tears are not forever - God is not indifferent to your tears - He sees and He
knows - someday, there will be an end to the pain and the grief which cause
most of them
Harold J. Sala
God’s Word Today
“He
will swallow up death forever, And the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all
faces; The rebuke of His people He will take away from all the earth; For the
LORD has spoken.” – Isaiah
25:8, NKJV
“Not all tears are equal,” Nahum Barnea told the
press.
He should know. His son was
killed in a bus bombing in Israel in 1995.
Barnea
is right. Not all tears are equal.
Neither are the causes of all
tears equal.
People shed tears for a lot of
reasons: joy, sorrow, pain, grief, remorse, excitement, shame and a host of
other emotions.
You may go to a movie and be
deeply touched by the plight of a puppy dog floating down a river towards the
roaring falls. It’s make-believe.
The actual puppy was never in
real danger, but it touches your heart and you cry.
Your tears are for a different
reason than that of the mother whose baby is dying and whose grief-stricken
heart is broken as her eyes fill with tears.
Actually,
the first mention of tears in the Bible is that of a mother who fears her child
is dying, and ironically, the baby who lived became the father of the Arabs
including the terrorist whose bomb killed Nahum’s son as he rode the bus in
Israel (See 1 Samuel 1).
But
not all tears are equal.
The father of the Prodigal, as
older men are prone to do, probably shed tears of joy when his boy who had
wandered far from home came back, humiliated and repentant.
Why do people cry when they are
happy?
Yes, it seems strange,
especially to youth that don’t understand why the wellsprings of emotion can’t
contain the joy, and overflow in tears.
There are happy occasions, and
tears of joy, which seemed so ridiculous to me in my youth, and now make sense
to me.
Joyful tears are much to be
preferred to tears of remorse and sadness — the kind people shed over the
casket of a little five-year-old boy whose arms cradle a teddy bear, a worn,
tattered blanket tucked beside the still body.
Not
all tears are equal.
There are tears of repentance,
which flow freely and leave the heart cleansed, the face shining, and the
conscience clear.
Tears of repentance do a lot
more good than tears shed over remorse — the kind that comes when you get
caught and you fear the embarrassment of being found out.
No,
not all tears are equal, and neither are tears bad, as we are prone to think — a
sign of weakness, especially for us men who repress our emotions lest someone
know our hearts can be touched.
Go to a museum in Israel today
and you will find that the ancients so valued tears that they preserved them.
How? By catching them in tear
bottles which are now on display — something strange to us today.
There
is one more thing that needs to be said. God is not indifferent to your tears.
He sees and He knows.
“I have heard your prayers and seen your
tears,” God told Hezekiah when he thought he was dying (2 Kings
20:5).
Read 1 Samuel and notice how
God’s heart was moved by the intensity of Hannah’s prayers when she could not
conceive a child.
Then
take your Bible and mark that great passage in Isaiah where God says, “He
will swallow up death forever, And the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all
faces; The rebuke of His people He will take away from all the earth” (Isaiah
25:8, NKJV).
Not
all tears are equal, and tears are not forever.
Someday, there will be an end
to the pain and the grief which cause most of them. May God hasten that day!
Resource reading: Revelation 21
Speaker,
author and Bible teacher, Dr. Harold Sala founded Guidelines in
1963.Pioneering the five-minute commentary in Christian radio, Dr. Sala’s daily
“Guidelines-A Five Minute Commentary on Living” is heard the world over in a
variety of languages. Sala, who holds a Ph.D. in biblical text, has authored
over 55 books published in 19 languages.He speaks and teaches frequently at
conferences, seminars, and churches worldwide. Residing in Mission Viejo,
California, Harold and his wife, Darlene, have three adult children (daughter
Bonnie is now Guidelines president) and eight well-loved grandchildren.
https://cbnasia.org/home/2018/08/not-all-tears-are-equal-gods-word-today/
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