That I may Know HIM - A Devotional

Day 24: The Prayer of Tears

Day 24: The Prayer of Tears

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 1. The laboratory of Tears.

Ten days ago, if I knew what I am about to share with you, I would not have had the regrets that haunted me from then, nor the inexplicable lingering burden from which I could not weave free.  It is with sorrow therefore that I share with you this message on the prayer of tears, as I have learned it from the Lord. I shall tell the rest of my story in later lines.

Sometime ago, I got puzzled by something I read in the Psalms, to the effect that God has a bottle, or bottles, in which He stores the tears of His people.  I wondered to myself, “What does God do with the tears in His bottles? Is there a library or laboratory in heaven, with our tears in beakers and cylinders?” It occurred to me that each teardrop is a microchip of those unspeakable emotions that generated the tear; that each teardrop is a coded material summation of the intangible and inarticulable turmoils that compelled it. I suppose that each time God picks up those bottles in His prayer laboratory, He reads the ripples of pain in them; He hears from them the echoes of those prayers, those pains, those aspirations that the crying person was unable to put into words. He decodes from them those requests and emotions expressible only in the language of tears, like the prayer language of the Holy Spirit, according to Romans 8:26-27.

Bible scholars tell us that the metaphor of tears in a bottle derives from the ancient Eastern practice whereby mourners saved their tears in a bottle, in memory of the dead.  At other times, if someone was sick, afflicted, or in great distress, their friends often visited them with a tear bottle, called a lachrymator. As the sufferer wept and the tears rolled down the cheeks, they were collected into the bottle and kept in memory of that tribulation. Each time one looked at that bottle, it became a reminder. Such ornate bottles decorated homes in Egypt and in Rome.

Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? (Psalm 56:8).

2. The language of Tears

Nobody can fully interpret tears, even as no one can perfectly translate any one language into another. The specialists tell us so.  However, tears have a language of their own that is universal.  Every human being speaks the language of tears. Whatever strange native language somebody speaks, when they cry, we seem to understand the common language of pain or joy that their tears express.

I do not speak Japanese, but when I see the Japanese woman weeping for her 2-year old son crushed in an earthquake, I understand that she is not celebrating a lottery of a million yens that she has won.  When I see the Korean grandfather weeping for a baby shot dead by a crazy gunman, I understand that he is not celebrating a birthday. He is speaking in a language too deep for words; a language best understood only by God; a language analogous to the prayer language of the Holy Spirit, according to Romans 8:26-27:

26 At the same time the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we don't know how to pray for what we need. But the Spirit intercedes...with our groans that cannot be expressed in words.

27 The one who searches our hearts knows what the Spirit has in mind. The Spirit intercedes for God's people the way God wants him to (Romans 8:26-27, GOD'S WORD).

The New American Standard Bible describes this prayer as “groanings too deep for words.” According to the New International Version, it is   I think it makes sense to me, otherwise tell me, what is the meaning of the repeated cry of “Ahhhh!” that comes from the young woman in Jos who has lost a husband to Islamic jihadists after only six months of a pleasant marriage?  How does one interpret the moans of “Ooo! Mnnn! Ehhh!” from a pastor in the northern Nigeria city of Bauchi whose church has been burnt down by Muslims, with his wife, four children, and fifteen members in it?  Only the Creator who puts our tears in His bottle can fully tell what such groans mean. Only in God's lachrymal laboratory can those wordless wails and tears be fully analyzed and interpreted.