Our Tears on God's Fingers--November 7, 2023

Our Tears on God's Fingers--November 7, 2023

"Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, 'Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?' I said to him, 'Sir, you are the one that knows.' Then he said to me, 'These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." [Revelation 7:13-17]

At the end of everything, the Creator of the universe bends down to our wet cheeks and sniffling noses with a tender hand... and wipes our tears away.

Read that again.  Go ahead.  I'll wait.

The thing that gets me about that detail from the last book in the Bible, which we call Revelation, is that if I were in God's position, I would think I'd have more important-looking things to do.  After all, this is a heavenly throne room.  This is the culmination of God's cosmic victory over the powers of evil and death.  This is the center point from which God's Reign of justice, mercy, and goodness radiates outward to fill all things.  Surely, the Sovereign over all the universe is needed for more pressing matters than wiping the snotty tear-stained faces of humanity... right?  Surely, God can get an archangel or a cherub or an apostle to be on tear-wiping duty?

And of course, the answer is that, of course, God could.  But the fact that God doesn't delegate tear-wiping duty to any lesser being tells you everything you need to know about God.

And to tell you the truth, it is on this image that I hang all of my hope for this world.  Terrible things happen in this world--they are happening right now in places where bombs are leveling neighborhoods and hostages are trembling in fear they'll never see their loved ones again, while we in this place pick petty fights about culture war issues that someone else has told us to get riled up about along with whatever ideological boogey-men the talking heads on TV have stoked up our fears over. And yet in a world where terrible tragedies happen, whether or not we are paying attention to them, God notices. God stops the procession in the heavenly throne room to attend to the one crying child.  God bends down to eye level with us and shares our sorrow as well as offering comfort.  God finds the ones who are overlooked and disregarded, and with the gentlest touch, lets them know they are safe in God's presence, even while their fellow human beings have been too distracted by background noise or too engrossed in their personal rectangles of technology to even notice they are there.  At the end of everything, God is still there wiping tears.  That is what love looks like, and that is the news we bring to the waiting world.

Maybe that's all that needs to be said today.  For the folks who are hurting and wondering if anybody else sees them or cares about them, you can be the one to say, "God promises to wipe our tears, and I am here to walk with you in the mean time as someone who comes in God's name."  And for the folks who are oblivious to the suffering of others and instead obsessed with whatever the latest tumult of the day promulgated by the Televised Outrage Machine, you and I can be the ones to say, "Hey, maybe the things we've been getting all fussy over are non-issues compared to life and death over here with the weeping ones," and we can awaken someone else to a bit of needed empathy and human decency."  Today, let's simply point people to the God who is still wiping tears after the strife is over and the victory is won.  

At the last, there will be our tears on God's fingers. That is enough to know.

Lord God, speak your comfort to all who need it while we wait for the day you wipe away every tear--not only from others' faces, but from our own.