“You
have kept count of my tossings;
put
my tears in your bottle.
Are
they not in your record?”
— Psalm 56:8 (NRSV)
We may wonder what is truly of personal value
in the eternal realm. We may wonder if what we value in this life lines up with
what God values in the next life. And if we are given to many tears, we may
ask, legitimately so, what may become of them; what legacy for our anguish?
How might there be reward for suffering? Our
faith holds us steadier when we imagine God crowning us in glory with rewards
of abundance so glorious we cannot fathom them either here or there.
We may wonder, as God saves up our ‘tears in
a bottle’ what that receptacle might look like. Is it like a parent keeping a
collage of a child’s artwork on the refrigerator door, before they carefully
scrapbook it for a prosperity? Or perhaps God is collecting these tears, all
our notes of surrender, and all our meek overtures of submission of spirit, so
his Spirit would have its way.
Maybe each emotion, and each resonance of
distress, has its own DNA, and together God is making a grand potion for our
eternal healing. Could it be that God has written this scroll containing all
our deeds and misdeeds, all our ecstasies and pains, and is saving it for that
day when we make our approach and enter the gates of Zion?
The Purpose of Such a Hope
God is a thoroughly good God.
For this reason, needing no other reason, we
have faith in a Blessed Hope: Jesus. Our Lord, Saviour and King is making for
us our eternal home, even if that destination is eternal and unchangeable.
Having such a hope gratifies our nature toward the living of life here and now.
With such a hope we have reason to endure
the hardships, trials, sorrows, and persecutions; we endure them with regal ardour.
Such a hope will never disappoint us, though
some would laugh at us for such a hope. But these people would not laugh if
they saw what hope does; what it truly does. It is the elixir for life.
Every grating pain, every silent tear, and
every groaning whimper; God has a record of every one of these notations of
faithfulness that caused us to bear up whilst not giving up.
***
We store up our blessings by the hardships
we endure. By these torments we bear we have meaning and purpose for life
because of the strength in God to sustain us. Even when life can seem so sadistically
cruel we can have faith sufficient to keep going. Such faith can never be
wrong. God is with us.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
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