Who Wipes Your Tears?
Illustration
Stories
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them and be their God;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’ (vv. 3-4)
Who wiped away your tears when you were a child? Was it your mother, your father, an older sister or brother, a grandparent, a teacher at school, the babysitter, or the kind old woman across the street? Who took out a handkerchief or a tissue and said, "There, there, it will be all right"?
We never outgrow our need for that kind of basic human comfort. Long after we have grown up and become the wiper of other people's tears, we still have moments when we long for the assurance that comes with the touch of someone's hand on our face and the sound of the soothing words "there, there, it will be all right."
Kirk Douglas tells about growing up in a very poor Jewish family with a mother who always had plenty of love for him and his five sisters, and who always seemed to know when they needed her: "My freshman year in college, I became ill with the flu and was lying in my dormitory room with a high fever. There was a knock on the door: 'Your mother's on the phone.' I was startled. We didn't have a telephone at home. She never called. I threw on a robe and walked down the hall. My mother was calling me from a neighbor's home. 'I had a feeling you were sick,' she said. After assuring her that I would be fine, I went back to my bed perplexed. How could she have known?"
Dr. Naomi Remen wrote a wonderful little book called Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal. Dr. Remen counsels people who are living with cancer. One of the stories is entitled "Kissing the Boo-Boo." It is about a woman who missed an appointment because she had to go to the emergency room for a bowel obstruction, a side effect of her radiation therapy. The pain was very severe, but somehow, she had managed to drive herself to the emergency room. When Dr. Remen asked her why she hadn't called a friend to drive her, she said that all of her friends were at work. When the doctor learned that she had spent all of the next day in the emergency room alone, she asked why she had not called a friend to be with her. The woman responded with irritation:
"Why would I call anyone? None of my friends know a thing about intestinal obstruction."
"Jessie," I said, "even children instinctively run to others when they fall down."
With a great deal of heat she said, "Yes, I've never understood that. It's so silly. Kissing the boo-boo doesn't help the pain at all."
I was stunned. "Jessie," I said, "it doesn't help the pain, it helps the loneliness."
Dr. Remen explained that Jessie's mother "had died when she was born. It had never occurred to her that anything could be done about the loneliness."
The author of Revelation tells us that something can be done about the loneliness. Indeed, something can and will be done about the pain. Late in the first century, in a time when Christians endured great tribulations and suffering, the seer of Revelation, writing from his cave in a penal colony on the island of Patmos, declares: "...God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning or crying anymore."
This is more than a nice metaphor. God is actively working in every life to give support in times of pain and trial.
During a troubled childhood in which he was severely handicapped by a disease that no one understood, Eddie Ensley tells that he was visited by "...a light I saw not with my eyes, but with my heart... and in the light I saw a gentle, somewhat bluish figure surrounded by a whiter brightness.... The light was all warmth. And the warmth of the light spoke to me, but without words.... 'I am the one who dries the tears of little boys...' "
God will wipe away every tear from our eyes! We have a God who will kiss all of our boo-boos. Like a crying child, who upon hearing the words "let me kiss it and make it better" falls relieved into her mother's arms, we will all fall into the embrace of a loving God, the only one who can give the eternal assurance we long for: "there, there, it will be all right.”
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them and be their God;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’ (vv. 3-4)
Who wiped away your tears when you were a child? Was it your mother, your father, an older sister or brother, a grandparent, a teacher at school, the babysitter, or the kind old woman across the street? Who took out a handkerchief or a tissue and said, "There, there, it will be all right"?
We never outgrow our need for that kind of basic human comfort. Long after we have grown up and become the wiper of other people's tears, we still have moments when we long for the assurance that comes with the touch of someone's hand on our face and the sound of the soothing words "there, there, it will be all right."
Kirk Douglas tells about growing up in a very poor Jewish family with a mother who always had plenty of love for him and his five sisters, and who always seemed to know when they needed her: "My freshman year in college, I became ill with the flu and was lying in my dormitory room with a high fever. There was a knock on the door: 'Your mother's on the phone.' I was startled. We didn't have a telephone at home. She never called. I threw on a robe and walked down the hall. My mother was calling me from a neighbor's home. 'I had a feeling you were sick,' she said. After assuring her that I would be fine, I went back to my bed perplexed. How could she have known?"
Dr. Naomi Remen wrote a wonderful little book called Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal. Dr. Remen counsels people who are living with cancer. One of the stories is entitled "Kissing the Boo-Boo." It is about a woman who missed an appointment because she had to go to the emergency room for a bowel obstruction, a side effect of her radiation therapy. The pain was very severe, but somehow, she had managed to drive herself to the emergency room. When Dr. Remen asked her why she hadn't called a friend to drive her, she said that all of her friends were at work. When the doctor learned that she had spent all of the next day in the emergency room alone, she asked why she had not called a friend to be with her. The woman responded with irritation:
"Why would I call anyone? None of my friends know a thing about intestinal obstruction."
"Jessie," I said, "even children instinctively run to others when they fall down."
With a great deal of heat she said, "Yes, I've never understood that. It's so silly. Kissing the boo-boo doesn't help the pain at all."
I was stunned. "Jessie," I said, "it doesn't help the pain, it helps the loneliness."
Dr. Remen explained that Jessie's mother "had died when she was born. It had never occurred to her that anything could be done about the loneliness."
The author of Revelation tells us that something can be done about the loneliness. Indeed, something can and will be done about the pain. Late in the first century, in a time when Christians endured great tribulations and suffering, the seer of Revelation, writing from his cave in a penal colony on the island of Patmos, declares: "...God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning or crying anymore."
This is more than a nice metaphor. God is actively working in every life to give support in times of pain and trial.
During a troubled childhood in which he was severely handicapped by a disease that no one understood, Eddie Ensley tells that he was visited by "...a light I saw not with my eyes, but with my heart... and in the light I saw a gentle, somewhat bluish figure surrounded by a whiter brightness.... The light was all warmth. And the warmth of the light spoke to me, but without words.... 'I am the one who dries the tears of little boys...' "
God will wipe away every tear from our eyes! We have a God who will kiss all of our boo-boos. Like a crying child, who upon hearing the words "let me kiss it and make it better" falls relieved into her mother's arms, we will all fall into the embrace of a loving God, the only one who can give the eternal assurance we long for: "there, there, it will be all right.”
