Washington Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

By Doug Bing, Washington Conference president

As a child running around the neighborhood with all the other neighborhood kids, we got into all sorts of things.

There was a time when our main interest was digging in the dirt in a ditch close to our house. We had stumbled on the place because one of us saw the neck of a bottle sticking out of the dirt, so we became amateur archeologists for several weeks. We would dig in that ditch with our little hand shovels, and we found all sorts of things.

It wasn’t until much later that we realized we were digging around in someone’s trash that had been discarded years before.

The most interesting things we kept finding were all types of bottles. The ones that were still pretty much in one piece were small bottles of all shapes and sizes. It was very interesting to get them out into the sunlight and clean them up. Some would change color in the light.

I kept the ones I found for many years. I wondered many times what the bottles had held at one time. They were discarded without a label, making it impossible to really know what they held.

God has a bottle, however, that the Bible puts a label on, and more than likely it holds a part of you. Psalms 56:8 states,

If you are like most you have suffered pain and loss. You have felt that pain and loss deeply and even shed tears.

The imagery of God collecting your tears into a bottle is one that brings me comfort. God understands and walks with you during those times of tears and of loss. I don’t know what He plans to do with that bottle of tears, but I am glad He keeps them because it is a symbol of Him walking with us through trials and tribulations.

Most of all, I am sure God is looking forward to the time when the bottle will no longer have tears added to it.

That time is coming and is spoken about in Revelation 21:4 where it says,

No more need for a bottle to collect tears because this earth will be made new, and pain and suffering will be no more. Loss will be no more.

Whatever pain you are in now, just know that God knows and is collecting your tears. God is looking forward to a time when everything is made right again. Let us keep walking with Jesus through the pain toward the time of no more pain.