During my last year or so of high school, I remember a conversation with my friend, Kelsey, when she had come to visit during a school break. We spontaneously and excitedly shared with each other that we’d each decided that we were Christians because we wanted to be. We both came from Christian families and attended each other’s churches when we got together. But now, we’d both embraced and claimed our faith in Jesus as our own, not just out of habit or duty. It’s a great core memory, and I’m so glad to share this experience with a friend I am still close to.
At that time in my life, I read my Bible a lot. I filled up spiral notebooks with meaningful verses, heartfelt prayers, current concerns, and future plans. I was 18 – I’d graduated from high school and was just starting college. But what would come next? What kind of career was ahead of me? What would life hold for me? Would I find a life partner? Where would I end up living? Sometimes I felt all of the promise of the future ahead of me, but, as many of us can remember from our teenage years, I felt plenty of anguish and uncertainty about the unknown path in front of me. And during one particularly prayerful and teary time, this verse leaped out at me:
“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)
What a wonderful verse to find at that point in my life! I have turned to that verse again and again through hardships and times when I’m seeking peace from God. And I love reading the slight variations in different Bible versions.
When I read this verse, I envision a room with innumerable glass bottles of tears in all directions. (Maybe it’s a bit like Ariel’s treasure room in The Little Mermaid.) There are so many bottles that they fade out of view. There are bottles for every person who has ever lived – bottles of all different shapes and sizes and colors. And all made of glass – strong and transparent and also fragile. I imagine God walking amongst these bottles. He immediately notices when a bottle has added tears. Maybe some of the additions are from tears of joy! As He records them, He reaches out and reminds us that the bottle is His, and that He is with us through our sorrow as well as through our joy.
I can still remember how I felt when 18-year-old me discovered this verse. I treasure the calming feeling that enveloped me. I knew that God saw all of my worries and cared enough to share them with me. And God regularly brings that memory to mind when tears and worries come. Sometimes it takes me a while to recognize that He’s standing there with the bottle of my tears, but I know He’s patient and with me for as long as that takes.
Mandy Sutter is wife to Nate, mom to Zack & Theo, an IT professional at Loma Linda University Health, an avid knitter, and a big fan of Disneyland, where she can wear the emotions that fill her bottle of tears.