God's Gift Of Tears
Dear brother Tant: Your editorial "Her Final Gift," in which you described your trip across the Rockies with brother Cogdill so impressed me, and was so in harmony with my own thoughts that I have read it through twice. I can read when I shut one eye and try hard to focus with the other. After reading your editorial I could not refrain from writing the short essay which I enclose. I had to have my typewriter placed on my thigh, so far from my eyes that I can not read what I have written; but I hope you can make it out. I think you are right about Roy, that he is destined to do the greatest preaching of his life in the years ahead. Suffering and grief can strengthen a man as nothing else can.
My own condition is not much changed, except that it is very clear now that I am nearing the Valley. May God hasten the day! This is likely the last effort I will make to write anything.
Good bye, W. W. Otey Every attribute of mind is given to us by God, and is a great blessing when properly used and exercised. This is especially true of the gift of tears or weeping. Tears are God's gift to a deeply grieved and broken heart. It is said that some cannot weep. If that be true, they are unfortunate indeed. In many years of experience and observation I have concluded that many harden their hearts against tears because they feel that such is a sign of weakness.
But Jesus wept with his sorrowing friends; and poured out his heart in grief over Jerusalem. Paul told the elders of Ephesus that he had admonished them "night and day with tears." More than once he spoke of writing with tears and weeping. We are commanded to "weep with those that weep," as well as to rejoice with them that rejoice. Surely if there are some who can NOT weep, who have not this gift, they are truly to be pitied.
When the Lord called "Mother" home, after we had lived together as one for more than 70 years, I did not think I could live so great was the grief in my heart. I would go from room to room of our humble cottage, with tears streaming from my eyes until I was completely exhausted. And then, through my tears, I understood that it was much better this way — that God had permitted "Mother" to receive her call while I was still able to care for her, which I would have been able to do only a few months longer. And then how I thanked God that things had worked out this way! My broken heart was comforted in the certainty of God's love and his infinite care for us. How much better that I be left alone, to finish out the few lonely years of life's span than that "Mother" be required to do this!
Truly, in tears we find healing and comfort.