An ExcerptI need assurance. I crave to know that Jesus is near in my sorrow, but the platitudes that are typically offered to believers aren’t typically enough for me. I need sturdiness; I need Christ himself taking my face between his holy, hole-y hands and telling me himself that he knows my name and sees my circumstances. If the offered encouragement can be slapped on a coffee mug, put on an Instagram post, or condensed down to a slogan, it probably isn’t enough to pull me out of despair. Or maybe it can do so temporarily. But it won’t last. It doesn’t have legs. So, there’s this material thing, tears, that have become a companion in my darkest moments. Tears do the hard work of clearing my eyes and making the light, beautiful, and glorious things visible. They join me to Christ in his earthly life. And each time I cry, I am also invited to remember that Christ will one day wipe away my tears and all aches they represent (Revelation 21:4). Tears, for me, are the promise of God’s nearness and the reminder of his eternal promises. They are the flimsy, frail thing that points me toward the sturdy, hopeful thing—that Christ recognizes the act of crying and has promised to erase our need for them in the New Jerusalem. “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. 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. 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. 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. This hope is sturdy. This joy, robust.”
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