One of things I love most about Scripture is the sheer beauty of the imagery it uses sometimes. Psalm 56:8 has always been one of my favorite verses for exactly that reason:
You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. (Psalm 56:8, NLT)
Other translations talk about wanderings instead of sorrow, and wineskins and scrolls, but sometimes our wanderings do bring us sorrow… and scroll, book, wineskin, or bottle aside – the point is that God sees us. And as Sarah Bessey so eloquently reminds us: we matter.
Eugene Peterson paraphrases it this way in The Message:
You’ve kept track of my every toss and turn through the sleepless nights,
Each tear entered in your ledger, each ache written in your book. (Psalm 56:8, The Message)
And The Voice (while not a translation I trust for accuracy but nevertheless appreciate for its poetry and attempt at digging for meaning), phrases it this way:
You have taken note of my journey through life, caught each of my tears in Your bottle. But God, are they not also blots on Your book? (Psalm 56:8, The Voice)
As if God were weeping with us, and His tears have blotted the ink on the pages of the grand story that we are co-authoring with Him about our lives.
photo courtesy of unsplash.com / Kien Do
It’s beautiful, isn’t it? A little less lonely than it would otherwise be, knowing we are seen and loved, and that every tear matters enough to be kept.
They’re the one thing worth bottling up.
But they can only be bottled if we let them go.
Ah, paradox. Gotta love it.
Still: never underestimate the power of a good cry. Sometimes it’s exactly what you need to bring you home again to the knowledge that you are seen and known – and dearly loved.
