April 8 – Sorrow in the Bosom of Faith

Hope for Today: A Daily Devotion from Reasons for Hope*Jesus

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“Put my tears into Your bottle; are they not in Your book?” Psalm 56:8

“Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.” Psalm 126:5-6

Believer, if you are now reaping in joy and singing hymns of triumph, be thankful. But remember that this work belongs more to the next world than the present. Here weeping and rejoicing follow each other, and sorrow will often find a lodging in the bosom of faith. For there is no retreat from the field of battle, and your enemies will not leave you while you have a breath to draw. Let this be a check to impatience. It is indeed needful to be humbled under a sense of your misery, so as to sigh, groan, and weep often; and this is the true seed for eternity.

Not a single tear or groan will be lost. They are all in the book of the Lord. Nor is there a single unneeded sorrow, a single grief in excess, or one suffering of the believer, in which the Man of Sorrows has not borne a part. It is sweet to weep over sin when we know it is pardoned, and it is sweet to weep in suffering if we realize that Jesus has a fellow-feeling with us. He who never wept on earth cannot know the blessedness intended by the Lord wiping away all tears from His people’s eyes. I would weep over sin and weep for Jesus — but for nothing else.

God counts the sorrows of His saints,
Their groans affect His ears;
He has a book for their complaints,
A bottle tor their tears!

Devotion by Karl Heinrich von Bogatzky (1690—1774)