{"id":2382,"date":"2023-02-17T09:39:23","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T14:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2382"},"modified":"2023-02-17T09:39:23","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T14:39:23","slug":"tears-in-a-bottle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/17\/tears-in-a-bottle\/","title":{"rendered":"Tears in a Bottle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>.
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When you think of an archeologist painstakingly excavating an ancient site, what kinds of objects do you picture coming into view?
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Coins, pottery, inscriptions, and shards of bone are valued finds.\u00a0 But one of the objects that frequently ends up in an archeologist\u2019s bag is what you see above: a tear bottle.\u00a0
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At least 3,000 years ago, people in the Mediterranean world began the practice of collecting their tears in small vials.\u00a0 Romans preferred glass.\u00a0 Jews tended to use small clay vessels.\u00a0 Tears of loss, bereavement, and pain \u2013 not to mention love and joy \u2013 might be captured and then treasured as a special way to remember a person or event.\u00a0
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A tear bottle \u2013 technically called a lachrymatory \u2013 might be offered as a tender gift.\u00a0 Archeologists have found thousands of them clustered around cemeteries.\u00a0 Sometimes they were interred with the deceased.\u00a0 Family members and friends were making a silent statement: \u201cThis how much I miss you, this is how much I love you.\u201d
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The tradition was revived during the Middle Ages and again during Victorian times.\u00a0 Today you can order personalized tear bottles from a number of online vendors.\u00a0
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After all, there are just as many tears flowing in our own time as in the ancient world.\u00a0
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Lachrymatories are even mentioned in the Bible.\u00a0 David writes in Psalm 56:8, \u201cYou keep track of all my sorrows.\u00a0 You have collected all my tears in your bottle.\u00a0 You have recorded each one in your book.\u201d\u00a0 This is extraordinary.\u00a0 God keeps track of our tears, recording them in \u201chis book\u201d as if maintaining a ledger of our most private moments of pain.\u00a0 And our tears end up not just in our own bottles, but in his bottle<\/em>.\u00a0 We know of no other statement from the ancient world that rivals such an intimate expression of God\u2019s love for hurting people.
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In 1990, Bette Midler scored a major hit with From a Distance<\/em>.\u00a0 She sings in the refrain, \u201cGod is watching us, God is watching us, God is watching us from a distance.\u201d
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But who wants a God who watches his messed-up creation from a distance?\u00a0 Would we feel drawn to someone gazing out from a 20th<\/sup>-story window at a mugging, a car wreck, or EMT\u2019s struggling with a heart attack victim, but doing nothing at all to help?
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The ancient Olympian gods and goddesses were certainly involved in this world\u2019s affairs.\u00a0 But they were also a hot mess, blundering their way into human history displaying adolescent hormonal surges and personal vendettas.\u00a0 The classic Greek philosophers never took such myths seriously.\u00a0
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But when those same philosophers got around to describing actual deities\u2013 as in the case of Aristotle\u2019s Prime Mover \u2013 they were reluctant to attribute anything like human emotions.\u00a0 If God really existed, God was impassive.\u00a0 Detached and uninvolved.\u00a0 Incapable of feeling happy, sad, angry, surprised, or disappointed.\u00a0 After all, if mere mortals could do anything that would launch the slightest ripple of emotion through the perfection of God\u2019s spirit, that would make God vulnerable.\u00a0 The changeless God would be subject to change.
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And that would mean God could not be God.\u00a0
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For the Hebrews, this was nonsense.\u00a0 Yahweh, by contrast, was a God who displayed an astonishing emotional bandwidth.\u00a0 According to Scripture, he could feel frustration, regret, and deep joy.\u00a0 He could roll up his sleeves and go to work, hold his people tenderly in his arms like a nursing mother, or fly into a rage like a jealous husband stricken by the discovery of his wife\u2019s unfaithfulness.
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And he could cry.
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In John 11, Jesus\u2019 eyes well up near the fresh grave of his friend Lazarus.\u00a0
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Jesus was saying, \u201cThis is what God the Father is like.\u00a0 He\u2019s not on the sidelines of life, watching from a distance.\u00a0 He\u2019s not neutral.\u00a0 He weeps with those who suffer.\u00a0 He welcomes our tears into his bottle.\u201d\u00a0
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So what kind of God do you believe in?\u00a0
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You can be content, with the philosophers, to stick with all the \u201comni\u2019s\u201d \u2013 that God is omnicompetent (can do anything), omnipresent (exists everywhere), and omniscient (knows everything).\u00a0
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Or you can believe on this winter day that God is the kind of God who cries at funerals.
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And that he cries along with you as well in all your darkest moments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here.\u00a0When you think of an archeologist painstakingly excavating an ancient site, what kinds of objects do you picture coming into view?\u00a0Coins, pottery, inscriptions, and shards of bone are valued finds.\u00a0 But one of the objects that frequently ends up in an archeologist\u2019s bag is what you see above: a tear bottle.\u00a0\u00a0At least… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[568,567],"class_list":["post-2382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gods-emotions","tag-tears"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2384,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382\/revisions\/2384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}