◄ What Does Psalm 56:8 Mean? ►

You have taken account of my wanderings; Put my tears in Your bottle Are they not in Your book?

Psalm 56:8(NASB)

Verse of the Day

The Scriptures are filled with lovely examples of the tender compassion that God extends to the people of Israel and to those that are part of the Body of Christ corporately. But He also displays His gentleness and sensitivity towards individuals as well. People who may have thought themselves insignificant to God. People like Hannah, the mother of Samuel; Jairus, the leader of the synagogue; the widow of Nain whose son was raised from the dead; sweet Mary of Bethany who was wrongly accused of gross extravagance by the disciples; people like you and me.

But is there a more beautiful illustration of the Lord's great tenderness and His gracious mercies towards each of His children, to you and to me, than is seen in the intimacy that is glimpsed in this lovely Psalm? For we read that the Lord takes account of all our sadness and all our pain, all our weariness and all our wanderings, all the salty teardrops that flow from our eyes and all the silent groans that rend the inner parts of our secret being. Indeed, we read in this precious verse that He has collected every single teardrop that has wet our lashes and recorded every single silent groan of our hurting heart, and He has placed each single tear in His bottle of remembrance and recorded each hurt in His book, because of His great love for each of His own.

Remember, He has scheduled every day of our lives and knows the tears that will result from the afflictions of His people. Our times are in His hands and we have a God Who knows and loves and cares for everything that causes His children pain. And even in these times of deep sadness and distress, we can, like our Saviour, gain a closer intimacy with our Father through the things that we suffer in obedience to His will.

And the wonderful thing is that through it, we will gain a closeness to His heart of love and a depth of understanding of our God that we never imagined possible (as did Job), for God has promised that the day is coming when sorrow will be turned into joy and tears will be turned into laughter. A day when He Himself will wipe away every wet tear from our eyes.

My Prayer

Father God, thank You for Your compassionate mercy toward me. Thank You that You care so deeply about everything that causes me pain, that You have put my tears in a bottle. Thank You that You know so intimately about everything that causes my tears and that in You, I can find my true source of comfort. In Jesus' name, AMEN.