Just before and during the time of the Roman occupation of the Jerusalem and the surrounding vicinity, women mourned in a sacred way. When a loved one died, they collected their tears in a bottle to lay in the grave of the deceased as a last act of honor. Tears were holy.
I can think of two other places in Scripture that mention tears: a) Psalm 56:8: "You have taken account of my wanderings; put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book?" b) the
"woman of the streets" highlighted for her reverent faith in Luke 7. She washed Jesus' feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair all the while kissing them.
Tears are holy.
I've cried a lot over my broken dreams and broken body the past seven years, but most of the time with an utterance of hatred toward God on my lips. These tears were not holy so they couldn't perform what they were designed to do: dignify and honor my grief and that which I was grieving.
Recently, I've nestled into the mystery that is God; I made a conscientious decision to dare to accept it and see what happened. And life has become lovelier.
If you read my last post, you know I've been crying a lot lately but these times, instead of being burdensome, they were my very source of relief; I haven't cried cursing God; I've cried in his lap.
But there still remains the questions: Why do there have to be tears in the first place?
This brings me 'round to the whole mystery-of-God thing. Reading On Job by founding liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutierrez, has brought great insight into this relational reality. God is a self-disclosing, loving Mystery and it is the honor of kings to search him out (Prov. 25:2). I dare you, in the midst of your grief, to practice this theology for a week and see what happens. In the introduction, "Jose Maria Arguedas poses the question, 'Is not what we know far less than the great hope that we feel?' p. xi"
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