Live Coals: Tears In Heaven

“Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?”
Psalm 56:8

God has an intimate acquaintance with and a tender remembrance of, all our parental anxiety. You sometimes see a man step right out from the most infamous surroundings into the kingdom of God. You say, “That is not logical; that man has not heard a sermon in twenty years; that man has not had any alarming providence; why is it he steps right out from the most debased surroundings into the kingdom of God?”

This is the secret: God one day looks at the bottle in which He keeps the tears of His dear children, and He finds there a parental tear which for forty years has been unanswered, and He says, “God to now, and I will answer that tear.” Quick as lightning to the heart of that debased and wandering man comes the influence of the Holy Ghost, and he steps out of his sin into the light of the Gospel.

Training an investment, not a waste

Oh, this work of training children for God and for heaven is a tremendous work. I know there are a great many people who have NOT been called to parental responsibility, who have a very complete idea about domestic discipline. They know how children ought to be trained! But to every intelligent parent it is a tremendous question.

Now there is a little child, and it is a beautiful plaything. It lies in the mother’s arms. She looks down into the bright eyes, and she examines the dimples on its feet, and she says: “What an exquisite organism.” Beautiful plaything that child is. But one night while that mother is rocking that child to sleep a voice drops straight from the throne of God, saying: “Do you know what you are rocking? That is an immortal.” Stars shall die, but that is an immortal. The sun will die of old age, but THAT is immortal.

“Mother, Father,
do you know what that child is?
That is an immortal.”

With some of you this is the chief anxiety. You try to train your children aright. You correct this folly, you chide that worldliness, and your midnight pillow is wet with weeping in parental anxiety; and you ask me today, you ask me in silence, but I hear the question coming up from hundreds of souls: “Is all this wasted? Are my prayers going to be heard? Is all this solicitude for nothing?”

I answer no. God has counted all the sleepless nights. God has heard all the counsels you ever gave to that boy or that girl in your household. God knows it all, and He has kept a record, and in lachrymal not such as is taken up from ancient sepulchre, but in a lachrymal that stands on His eternal throne, He has gathered all those exhausting tears.

Weeping now, Joy then

The grass may be rank on your grave, and the letters may have faded from the tombstone under the dash of the elements, but He who has said, “I will… be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee,” (Genesis 17:7) will not forget, and some day in heaven, while you are ranging the fields of light, the gates of pearl will open, and garlanded with glory that wanderer will rush into your outstretched arms of welcome and triumph. The hills may depart, and the stars may fall, and the world may burn, and time may perish, but God will break His oath never, never!