Every Tear

The article below gives answer to one of the most often asked questions of God: "Why do we suffer and what does it mean?" The meaning of suffering is found in the heart of the gospel and is the only place where legitimate and lasting healing can be found; hope is born of suffering, exemplified by God himself.

10/13/08
A Slice of Infinity
Every TearJill Carattini

My heart sank as the young mother told the interviewer how proud she was of her daughter. "She solved her own murder," Erin said with a proud but pained sincerity. Five year-old Samantha was the victim of a cruel and tragic murder, and her own tears were the evidence that sealed the case against her abductor. DNA in the form of teardrops was found on the passenger-side door of the killer's car, irrevocably making their mark on the crime scene, and poignantly making their mark on everyone that imagines them.

I don't know how to read stories like this without retreating to the deepest why's and how's of life. The abrupt ending to Samantha's life is another wretched symptom of a sick and desperate world. The problem of evil is a problem that confronts us, sometimes jarringly. But something else jolts my numbed mind awake in the midst of this story.

I had no idea our tears were so personally our own. Samantha's tears solved the case because there were none others like hers. They were unique to the eyes they came from, intricately a part of Samantha herself. In the pains and joys that cause us to weep, we leave a mark far more intimate than we realize. We shed evidence of our own makeup, leaving behind a complex, yet humble message: I was here, and my pain was real.

The problem of pain is only intensified by the personal nature of our experience with it. In our tears we all leave the markings of our existence within a broken and despairing world. Traces of our very makeup cry out for an answer to suffering, while at the same time pointing to the intricate and intelligent design of the one who made us. The thought stirringly brings new depth to the image of the sinful woman weeping at the side of Jesus, washing his feet with her unique tears.

Dorothy Sayers offers a most compelling description of the God willing to take on the limitations and suffering of his creation. In her book Creed or Chaos, she writes: "For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is--limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death--He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile."(1)

I know of no equal comfort in the midst of life's sorrow, no other answer to the problem of pain. The Son of God is as unique and personal a savior as the tears we shed crying out for him. Every tear is marked with the intricacies of our Creator. Every cry is heard by the one who wept at the grave of Lazarus. And in the promise of Revelation 7:17, we find the image of this hope brought finally to fruition: "For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos? (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949), 4.