The Holiness of Tears

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Her husband had just been diagnosed with terminal

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cancer. Elizabeth Groves was a follower of Jesus and knew the

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Bible. Even though she had faith in God, she was completely

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falling apart. She thought about how you're supposed to handle

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something like this. Aren't you supposed to stay strong and keep

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it together so you can be an example to the kids? Hold it all

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up so nobody else crumbles. But something just didn't sit right

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with her. Because she looked at her husband and she looked at

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her children, and she thought, "If I pretend I'm fine right now,

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I'm lying to everyone in this house, including God." So she

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made a decision. Right there at the beginning of what would be

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the hardest season of their she sat everyone down and

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established one simple house rule. "In this home," she said,

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"it's always okay to cry." You had to apologize, or hold it

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together for someone else's comfort. No sneaking off to the

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bathroom to break down in private and then coming back

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with a straight face. The tears were welcome any time and for

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any reason. It changed something in that house. We'll come back

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to why in a moment, but first…

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Welcome to Daily Devotions for Busy Lives I'm Bart Leger.

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There's an unspoken rule in a lot of Christian circles, maybe

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you felt it. It goes something like this: "Strong faith means

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staying composed, smiling through the hard stuff, saying,

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'I'm blessed' when someone asks how you're doing, even when

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you're barely holding it together.' And I want to say

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something clearly today: that is not biblical faith. That's a

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performance. And it's costing a lot of people the very comfort

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God's trying to give them. Here's what Scripture says in

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8, "You keep track of all my sorrows, you have

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collected all my tears in your bottle, you have recorded each

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one in your book." Go back and read that slowly. God keeps

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track of your sorrows. He collects your tears, and He

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records each one. This is not the description of a God who's

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waiting for you to pull yourself together. That's the description

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of a God who's paying close and careful attention to every

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moment of pain you've ever carried.

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Your tears are not a problem to Him. And they're not the

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evidence that your faith is weak. They are really significant to

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God. They're so significant to Him that He keeps an account of

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every single one. The Psalms are saturated with honest grief.

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Psalm 22 opens with: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"

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Psalm 88 ends with the word: "Darkness" with no resolution,

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no tidy bow, just raw pain laid before God. The writers of

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Scripture didn't present a sanitized version of their inner

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lives like we do sometimes. They brought the full weight of their

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grief right to God, and God included those cries in His Word.

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And then there's Jesus. John 11: 35, the shortest verse in the

"Jesus wept." "Lazarus has died." Jesus knew He was

about to raise him from the dead, but He cried anyway. Because the

grief of the people around Him was real, and He didn't stand at

a distance from it. He entered into it. Hebrews 5: 7 goes even

further, telling us that Jesus offered up loud cries and tears

in the garden before His death. Not just quiet, composed,

dignified weeping, but loud cries: "The Son of God!" in full

display of His humanity cried out with everything He had. If

that is what faith looked like in Jesus, then I believe we need

to rethink what we've been calling strength. Grief isn't

the opposite of faith. Grief is what faith looks like in a

broken world. It means you loved something. It means you're

honest enough to feel the weight of loss, rather than pretending

it isn't there. And it means you're bringing that weight to

the only one who can really carry it. And what tends to

happen when we suppress grief is that it doesn't disappear. But

it goes underground. It hardens into bitterness. And it comes

out sideways as irritability or numbness or a distance from God

that we can't quite explain. It can't quite explain. The tears

that weren't cried don't go away. They just find another exit.

God's invitation in Psalm 56 is not to compose yourself for His

benefit. It's to bring Him the real thing, the full weight of

what you're carrying, the trust that He can handle it. Because

He can. He already knows. And He's already in the room. He's

not waiting for you to compose yourself before He shows up

because He's already there. And He's collecting every tear,

recording every sorrow. Now let's get back to Elizabeth. So

why did One Simple House Rule change everything for

Elizabeth's family? Because giving everyone permission to

cry out loud meant nobody had to carry their grief alone in the

dark. The tears that might have festered into bitterness, into

exhaustion, or into silent distance between people who

loved each other could come out in the open where they could be

seen, where they could be shared. She pointed to a single verse as

the foundation for that decision, Hebrews 5: 7, which says that

Jesus Himself offered up loud cries and tears in the garden

before His death. If the Son of God wept loudly, she thought,

then crying in this house is not a crisis of faith. It's faith

doing exactly what it was supposed to do. And Psalm 56: 8

tells us that God doesn't look away from those tears. He

collects them. He records them. count of every sorrow. So here's

the question I want to leave you with today. What tears are you

trying not to cry right now? What grief are you keeping under

control because you think that's what faith looks like? You're

not holding it together for God because God already knows. He's

not waiting for you to get yourself composed before He will

show up. He's already there in the room with you and watching,

already holding every tear you've been afraid to cry. You

don't have to be fine. You just have to be honest. And here's

today's challenge. Find a quiet place and give yourself

permission to be honest with God about something you've been

holding together. You don't have to have the right words. You

don't have to sound composed or anywhere near theological. Just

tell Him what hurts. If the tears come, just let them come.

He's already collecting them. He's already recorded this

moment before you got there. Bring Him the real thing and

trust that He's big enough to hold it. Lord, thank you that

you don't look away from our pain. Thank you that you keep

track of every sorrow and collect every tear. Forgive us

for the times we've composed ourselves instead of bringing

you the truth. Teach us that honest grief is not weak faith,

it's trust. Help us cry out to you the way your Son did with

everything we have, knowing you're already there. In Jesus'

name, Amen. This podcast runs on the generosity of listeners just

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DailyDevotionsForBusyLives.com/support . I thank you so much. Thanks

for joining me on Daily Devotions for Busy Lives.

Remember, God keeps track of every sorrow and collects every

tear. You don't have to be fine. You just have to be honest with

Him. Come back next time for more encouragement to help you

live grounded in God's truth. Until then, God bless and have a

great day.