“Put my tears in Your bottle”

“…   Put my tears in Your bottle …” (Psalms 56:8).

                There are still tears in the bottle of my heart.  They are the tears I will never forget.  I still remember vividly the tears that flew in their eyes.  They are the tears that are so precious to me.  The tear that is written deepest in my heart is a drop of tears from my first baby Charis.  When I held her first and last time in my arms, she passed away.  And I saw one drop of tears in her right eye.  Whenever I participate in the communion, I intentionally think of Charis who was in the Los Angeles Children Hospital Intensive Care Unit for 55 days and who had numerous needle marks in her body.  And when I think about her, I remember one drop of her tears and it makes my heart moving.  The second deepest tear in my heart is the tear of my beloved wife.  I still remember clearly when my wife was crying in front of Charis.  She was crying very hard because her baby Charis was slowly dying.  I had never seen my wife look as beautiful as that time.  Another unforgettable tear of my wife is when she shed her tears after she spread Charis’ ashes in the water.  It was inside the small boat in where my wife was sitting in front and I was in the back.  Suddenly my wife who was looking at the front turned to me and said “Titanic”.  I think she was joking, thinking about the movie “Titanic”.  And when I saw her face, she was crying.  Her tears were dropping from her eyes.  I still cannot forget her tears that she shed at that moment.  Another tear that is in the bottle of my heart is my grandfather’s tears.  I still remember when my grandfather was in St. Vincent Hospital Intensive Care Unit.  It was Sunday morning when I visited him before I went to my friend pastor’s church to preach.  After I proclaimed the word of God to my grandfather during the worship, I prayed for him.  After we prayed and when I opened my eyes, I saw tears on my grandfather's right eye.  Although he couldn’t speak because he was wearing an oxygen respirator, he shed his tears and I cannot forget that tears.  That night he passed away as he was sleeping.  I also cannot forget my grandmother‘s tears that she shed when I and my wife visited her in St. Vincent Hospital.  I thought she was crying because she was afraid to die.  So I asked her, 'Grandma, are you afraid of death?'  She said ‘No’.  She said she was very thankful to God.  So I asked her ‘Why are you thankful to God?’  She answered it was because the Lord raised several pastors in our family.  She was so thankful for that.  That was why she shed her tears.  And her tears are in the bottle of my heart.

                I have been thinking of tears in my heart as I have been living my faith.  However, when I was reading the Bible yesterday night for today’s Morning Prayer, my gaze stopped at Psalm 56:8 because the Bible says “…  Put my tears in Your bottle  ….”  Obviously I would have read this Bible passage many times before, but I just passed that Bible passage until yesterday night.  Then, during today’s Morning Prayer, as I was preaching the word of God based on Psalms 56:4, I got more interested in verse 8.  So as I am writing down this I am meditating the verse 8 again.  Now my interest is to focus on the tears of the beloved who are in the Lord's bottle, rather than the tears that are in the bottle of my heart.  I believe that the tears of the beloved in my heart bottle are already in the Lord’s heart bottle.  And I firmly believe that the Lord loves them much more than I am.  So I am offering all those tears to the Lord who knows their tears best.  How can I understand the meaning of the tears that my first baby shed, the tears that my wife shed and the tears my grandfather and grandmother shed.  But since my omniscient God knows and fully understands the meaning of all of their tears that they shed, I hope and pray that the Lord receive all of their tears from the bottle of my heart.  Also, I hope and pray that the Lord receives my three tears that I shed during our church college retreat in May 1987 because of the work of the Holy Spirit in my heart: tears of repentance, tears of devotion and tears of gratitude.  I wish I could continue to shed these three tears in my life until I die.  Therefore, I want to fill the bottle of the Lord with these tears.