Wanderings and tears

You number my wanderings; Put my tears into Your bottle; Are they not in Your book? - Psalm 56v8

This is such a beautiful picture of a tender, caring, compassionate God. The psalmist was in forced exile. His enemies were pursuing him. He was away from home and family. It was a time of great despair.

And yet he knew that he was not going through it alone. He knew that there was Someone there who was watching over him. He had Someone who cared. God was keeping track of his troubles. He was keeping his tears in a bottle. He was keeping track of at all in a book. God knew.

I especially like the picture right in the middle. 'Put my tears in Your bottle,' David wrote. Some Bible scholars speak of a 'lachrymatory.' This was a 'tear bottle' which the Romans and some other used in times of mourning to collect the tears of those hurting as a remembrance of their sorrow.

I have always wondered about that illustration. When I try to imagine someone with a little bottle trying to scrape tears off the cheek of someone in mourning it doesn't click to me.

Spurgeon and others have a different view, one that makes sense to me. The psalmist uses the word for 'wineskin.' Here is what Spurgeon writes - 'His sorrows were so many that there would need a great wineskin to hold them all. There is no allusion to the little complimentary lachrymators for fashionable and fanciful Romans, it is a more robust metaphor by far; such floods of tears had David wept that a leathern bottle would scarce hold them. He trusts that the Lord will be so considerate of his tears as to store them up as men do the juice of the vine, and he hopes that the place of storage will be a special one--thy bottle, not a bottle.'

I like that. I certainly cannot 'outword' Spurgeon so I won't even try. It is a great comfort that in our times of deepest pain and despair God knows all about it. He cares enough that he holds and remembers our greatest pains. He is there by our side.

Praise God that He is with us in our pain.