He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
- from Revelation 21:4
 
One day God will take all our tears away. That’s a big promise. We have so many tears. Death and taxes make us cry. As does the NCAA tournament, the pollen, spilled milk, broken marriages, dashed hopes, and cable news.
 
Some of us will never be seen crying. We hold our emotions in a vault close to our intestines. Our steely eyes never water. But that doesn’t mean we don’t cry. Maybe the tears come when we’re alone. Maybe we wait until we’re in the shower in order to maintain for ourselves a measure of deniability. Or maybe our tears form on the inside as the pain, grief, and brokenness of the world tear up our guts.
 
We live in a world that’s beautiful and filled with joy. There are hills and bends-in-roads in Chatham County that can suddenly surprise you with dazzling sunsets. People are capable of the most remarkable, inspiring, moving acts of compassion and kindness. Every day we hear stories of the goodness of humanity and the world if we choose to listen.
 
And yet this world is truly, madly, deeply broken. There’s almost no imagining the horror of man’s inhumanity to man. Those who have yet to become jaded must be continually shocked at the depths of human sin.
 
Weeping is the appropriate response to the evil we experience: the evil done to us, the evil done in our sight, and the evil we do ourselves. We shed tears and call out to God to make it stop.
 
And he will. He will. Not yet. Not today. But he will.
 
Some days it feels like our sadness will last forever. But it won’t. It won’t. Our Father will stop the madness. He will make it stop. We will wipe our tears from our eyes.
 
What grief do you carry today? Where are you sad about your behavior, your experience, or the state of things? Take that sorrow to the God who will one day wipe all tears away. Tell him about it. Don’t run from it or hide from it. Take it to the Lord.