When I picked up the phone that night, I heard my daughter-in-law’s trembling voice: “I just found out that my sister has only twenty-four hours to live. “
He immediately took a flight to California, hoping to be with his older sister for the last time. The next morning I received this text message: “I didn’t make it. Died? Her sister’s death came just five days after the anniversary of her mother’s death. “death six years earlier. Of course, there were tears. Lots of tears.
- If you suffer the loss of a loved one.
- Face divorce from your parents.
- Discover your husband’s infidelity.
- Tolerate your teenage child’s hostility.
- Learn of your friend’s betrayal.
- Or experience a breakup with the man you thought you would marry?Painful and disappointing circumstances make us cry.
- Of course.
- We all desperately wish to avoid this kind of pain and would do everything we could to avoid this kind of anguish in those we love.
- But the truth is that we cannot.
- It’s the painful reality of living in a fallen world.
Tears are made of life and expression of the pain we experience. The ecclesiaste book prepares us to interpret our tears. In his famous poem of the third chapter, the author identifies the seasons and times, determined by our sovereign God, for us in this life, including the times of sadness: “Everything has its certain time, and there is time for every purpose under heaven: . . . Time to cry?” (Ec 3:1,4).
If, for you, it is “time to cry”, your emotion is not a lack of faith: God has determined the time of your tears and, therefore, it is time to cry. Even if it seems like you’ll never be happy again, your tears won’t last forever. Does Crying have your time?you have a start date and an end date.
This is not to say that one day you will not be moved by the causes of your tears; Some painful experiences will always accompany us, but the Ecclesiastes tells us that God also took the time to laugh (Ec 3:4). Or, as the Psalmist says, “At nightfall, weeping will come, but joy will come in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). Even if you find it hard to believe now, one day you’ll laugh again.
It is true that in times of grief it is difficult to see beyond our tears, it is difficult to imagine moments of joy, which will come after the time of pain, but in times of sadness much more is happening than we can imagine.
In his infinite wisdom, Heavenly Father weeds the painful threads of our lives in a great project; he did something beautiful with our tears: “Did everything turn beautiful [even the time to cry] in due course?(Ec 3. 11). However, we rarely see the beauty that God creates. Our vision is filled with the devastation of our suffering and the Questions are filled with tears. Why would I, sir, why would you do that?How can it be a good thing for so much pain?
Wanting to know and understand is part of our DNA. We recognize that there is a larger image, a greater purpose for our suffering, why?[God] put eternity in man’s heart?(Ec 3:11). We want to discover what God is doing, but it prevents us from discovering that God has also placed limits on our capacity for understanding: “Without this [man] being able to discover the works god has done from start to finish. ( Ec 3,11) This ability to perceive, not yet perceive, is god’s work.
In other words, our desire to understand our tears and our inability to understand them were established by God. As JIPacker writes: God has hidden almost everything we would like to know about the providential purposes he fulfills . . . in our own lives. ? When we accept that we know something, but we cannot know everything, we stop trying to find out everything, our anguish will diminish and a sweet peace will penetrate our souls, we can simply weep before our Lord and trust in him to create something beautiful for his glory.
To help us endure moments of sadness, God gives us daily gifts and incredible gifts!It is a gift from God that man can eat, drink, and enjoy the good of all his work (Ec 3:13). Normally, we consider food and drink simply as food for our bodies, but they are more than fuel to live. As Joo Calvin writes: “If we consider the purpose for which God created food, we will discover that He not only intended to satisfy need, but also pleasure and joy. “
During a period of crying for me (and my whole family), a friend sent us chocolate croissants with Samuel Rutherford’s famous quote written on the card (only slightly reformulated):?[Croissants] of the Lord? Not only were they the best croissants I’ve ever eaten, but they also cheered me on in the middle of a dark season.
At the same time, I was helping one of my daughters start their small business; something we wouldn’t have started if we knew what was going to happen, but every day, as we worked from morning to night, preparing a workspace, ordering supplies, framing works of art, executing orders, we realized that God had provided this effort as a useful distraction from our pain. The simple pleasures of food, drink, and work are truly wonderful gifts of God in times of weeping.
When we turn to God with tears, the periods of tears also become our periods of greatest growth. Ecclesiastes tells us that God uses our particular time of sadness to teach us to fear him: “And that makes God fear before him” (Ecclesiastes). 3. 14).
Even if it seems that we have stagnated, or even lost spiritually in the midst of our tears, the opposite is true. God works in our lives to promote the growth of piety. He determines “a time to cry” to reveal Himself to guide us sovereignly through this valley of tears in a deeper way than we have ever known Him, so that we can trust and value Jesus Christ above all else.
Then to my daughter-in-law and to all who mourn: look at Christ, his Savior, who walked on this earth, wept for our sin, suffered humanity, and went to the cross in our place. . No matter how long and difficult this painful moment is, you may find comfort in remembering the truth of Ecclesiastes 3: God creates beauty, sends gifts every day, and teaches him to fear Him.
And one day, soon, “there will be no more time to cry. “For God Himself will wipe away all the tears in his eyes, and death will no longer exist, there will be no more mourning, there will be no mourning, there will be no pain, there will be no pain. , because the first things have passed (Ap 21:4).