Turning Tears into Wells

Our younger children have a book of Bible story-based encounters that I enjoy reading from every now and then. In the spirit of remembering Jesus’s resurrection this past week, I had pulled out the book to read what I assumed would be an experience of Jesus’s resurrection because the chapter was titled “The Rolled Away Stone”. As I began to read the story (which is written as if you’re part of the experience), you’re hurrying to a tomb when you come upon a weeping Jesus. I stopped. Wait a minute, a weeping Jesus? This was Lazarus’s resurrection! 

I had mistakenly turned to the wrong Bible story. The Holy Spirit drew my attention to the similarities. The tears. The tomb. The stone rolled away. The miraculous turnaround and revival of hope. 

I thought about the tears in both stories. How seemingly needless they felt knowing the endings. The Holy Spirit corrected me and reminded me of Psalm 56:8 “You have taken account of my wanderings; put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book?”. When I dug deeper into this verse, I found there was a thing called a “nod” in ancient Israel that was a sheep or goat skin bottle made to hold liquids for travelers. These “bottles” or “nods” that Psalm 56:8 refers to prevented any leakage, resisted decay, and preserved precious liquids from evaporating. 

I thought this was interesting because it showed tears as being carried on a journey. We often don’t think of tears as the beginning of a movement but as a reaction to an ending. In God's Kingdom, tears mean a journey has begun. Tears in this verse were also carried in a vessel that prevented decay. Decay is a function of time. That means the redemption for our tears doesn’t have an expiration. God can redeem tears no matter how “old” they are. Finally, nothing was lost. It’s a promise that not one tear falls through the cracks. He accounts for it all.  

Tears weren’t needless to God. They were precious. I heard in the Spirit, “When I’m involved, tears always become a rolled-away stone”. The tears before Lazarus and the tears in Gethsemane both ended in a rolled-away stone. 

Initially, I thought of the obvious meaning of a rolled-away stone. It was the raising of the dead, revival of the hopeless, and manifestation of the impossible. The things we had given up on or seen as too far gone were making a glorious turnaround. But the Lord told me to look at stones in His word. 

I began to scour the Bible from the beginning for “stones” until I found a verse that stopped me in my tracks. It was a seemingly frivolous detail of background information at the beginning of Rachel’s story. Genesis 29:3 reads, “When all the flocks were gathered there, the shepherds would roll the stone away from the well’s mouth and water the sheep. Then they would return the stone to its place over the mouth of the well.”

Shepherds of ancient Israel knew that rolled-away stones held wells behind them to water their sheep. When Jesus rolls away a stone, He not only dries our tears, but He opens a well to water us (His sheep). The Lord invites us to trade our tears for a well of revival! 

You can come back to a well. You can draw from a well over and over again. Every turn-around He does becomes a well from which we can be watered from time and time again. It also becomes a source from which we can water His sheep. The testimony of your turnaround will satisfy those thirsty for hope. 

Whatever part of the process you’re in- the tears, the turnaround, or the well- know that it has value. Encounter the Lord in that place. Because when Jesus is involved, tears turn into wells. 

Ask God:

1. Father, what hopeless “tombs” in my life do you have a turnaround planned for? 

2. Holy Spirit, what hope do you want to fill me with from your well?

3. Jesus, in what ways are you using me and my testimonies as a well for your sheep?