God will wipe away every tear
from their eyes. Maria Sandberg, Glimpses of Heaven,
1880. God will wipe away every tear
from their eyes. Revelation 7, 17. Although it
is true that whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every
son whom He receives, still we are not all called upon to suffer
great tribulation. God appoints for each the discipline
needed to prepare him for glory. With some he deals gently, for
he knows how much the weak can bear. He sees the tenderness
of their spirits, the gentleness of their nature. With others
he may appear to deal more harshly, He alone knows how hard and stubborn
is their will, how great their backslidings, how needful all
this seeming severity. He also permits great tribulation
to fall upon some, that they may be examples to his church,
examples of love, of patience, of long-suffering, and is not
this an honour? Shall we not count it all joy
to be thus tried? and has not God promised to proportion
His consolations to the sufferings of His people? With what powerful
comfort will such a passage as that which we are meditating
upon come home to the deeply tried Christian, to him whose
tears are wrung from him by pain of body, loss of friends, one
bitter affliction after another, God will wipe away every tear
from their eyes. The anticipation of suffering
is often a cause of greater anguish than suffering itself, for though
we are told not to worry about anything, Still, the anxious
mind will often distress itself with gloomy forebodings while
in this valley of tears. But in heaven we shall have no
fear of evil, no cause for fears. God shall wipe away all tears
from our eyes, the tear of sympathy, the tear of pity, the tear of
separation, the tear of pain. The tear of godly sorrow for
sin, the tear of disappointed hope, the tear of wounded affection
shall flow no more. God will wipe away every tear
from their eyes.