“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain…” (Revelation 21:4).
John first heard that promise as an old man on an island prison. He introduces himself as “your brother, and companion in tribulation… in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 1:9). Rome’s eagle watched the sea-lanes. The emperor’s face stared back from every coin. Incense burned on altars where citizens were pressed to say, “Caesar is lord.” Believers met quietly in houses, whispered hymns before dawn, and watched doors and windows while they prayed. In that hard world of iron power and fragile hope, God opened heaven to a man in chains and showed him a city coming down—like sunrise after a long, bruising night. And in that vision John heard what every widow, shepherd, prisoner, and child had longed to hear: God Himself will wipe away our tears.
The question that still haunts hearts is the same: If God is real, and if He is love, why is there so much pain? Scripture does not answer with a cold essay; it gives us a story that begins before our dust was made. Once, in heaven, a shining being called “Lucifer, son of the morning” turned from the God who made him (Isaiah 14:12). Love requires freedom; it cannot be forced. Lucifer chose pride. “There was war in heaven… and the great dragon was cast out” (Revelation 12:7–9). Rebellion that began in heaven spilled down to earth. In a perfect garden, under unfallen trees, a serpent whispered slander about God, and our first parents reached for what promised more and delivered less. From that moment, the ground was cursed, and sorrow entered daily life: “Cursed is the ground for thy sake… in sorrow shalt thou eat of it” (Genesis 3:17).
Since then, tears have had a long history. Rachel wept for her children and “would not be comforted” (Jeremiah 31:15). David went up the Mount of Olives barefoot, head covered, weeping as he went (2 Samuel 15:30). Mothers clutched their babies in Bethlehem as Herod’s soldiers filled the streets (Matthew 2:16–18). Poor families felt the weight of taxes while soldiers drilled in the road. The Bible is painfully honest: this world is not the way God designed it to be. Evil is not His plan; it is the vandalism of His plan. Jesus said it plainly: “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life” (John 10:10).
Yet in the middle of that vandalized world, Scripture shows us the heart of God. “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart” (Psalm 34:18). He does not just notice sorrow from a distance; He draws near to it. He keeps record of every tear—“put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?” (Psalm 56:8). Our pain is not lost in the wind; heaven has written it down.
Walk slowly through the Bible’s gallery of grief. Sit beside Job on the ash heap while the smell of burned ruins still hangs in the air and friends offer more arguments than comfort (Job 2:8; 13:15). Listen to captives in Babylon quietly humming Psalm 137, trying not to cry where their captors can see. Step into that small Galilean town where a widow follows the bier of her only son. There is dust, wailing, the finality of death—until a Stranger steps into the procession, touches what no Rabbi would touch, and says, “Weep not” (Luke 7:13). The young man sits up, and the funeral becomes a reunion (Luke 7:11–15).
Then go to Bethany. Two sisters stand in the shadow of a stone and say what so many hearts have said since: “Lord, if thou hadst been here…” (John 11:21, 32). Time feels like the enemy. Help seems to have come too late. Jesus looks at the weeping, looks at the grave, and the One who made the worlds does something simple and shocking: “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). He weeps knowing He is about to call Lazarus from the tomb. He weeps anyway. That is the heart that stands behind the promise to wipe away all tears. Then He speaks the words that aim straight at the root of our fear: “I am the resurrection, and the life” (John 11:25).
Pain, then, is not proof that God has abandoned us. It is the place where His love keeps covenant. On the very day humanity fell, God promised a Deliverer: the “seed of the woman” who would bruise the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). In the fulness of time, under Rome’s banners and temple lamps, Jesus came. He wore our frail flesh. He knew hunger, weariness, loneliness, misunderstanding. He told us plainly, “In the world ye shall have tribulation,” but in the same breath He handed us courage: “but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
The cross was not a tragic detour in an otherwise smooth plan; it was the narrow road right through the center of all sorrow. At Calvary, Christ stepped into the darkest part of our story—death itself—“that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them” who lived all their lives in fear (Hebrews 2:14–15). “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). The blows that seemed to fall on Him were landing on the enemy’s head.
One of the deepest questions we wrestle with is about those who seem most innocent: What about the little ones? Why do children suffer and die in a world they did not choose? Scripture does not minimize those tears. Rachel’s weeping is preserved in God’s Word (Jeremiah 31:15). Matthew records the mothers of Bethlehem (Matthew 2:18). Yet those same passages whisper hope. In Jeremiah, the Lord answers Rachel’s tears: “Refrain thy voice from weeping… they shall come again from the land of the enemy” (Jeremiah 31:16–17). Death came because a broken world touches every cradle—“by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin” (Romans 5:12)—but little ones are not rebels by their own choice. David stands beside the grave of his child and says, “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23). Jesus opens His arms and says, “Suffer the little children to come unto me… for of such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14). Paul adds, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). The same Shepherd who gathers lambs with His arm (Isaiah 40:11) will not misplace a single child He once lent to earth.
Still, there is the ache of the in-between—the long distance between today’s grief and the New Jerusalem. How do we live here, under emperors and mortgages, headlines and hospital visits? First, we need to know we are not wrong to feel the groan. “The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now… waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:22–23). This ache is not the gasp of something dying; it is the labor pain of something about to be born.
Second, we must not read God’s timing through our frustration and call it neglect. “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise” (2 Peter 3:9). He waits like a farmer waits for precious fruit of the earth (James 5:7). What feels like delay is often mercy—for you, for those you love, even for those you have never met. Third, we are invited to let our trials do their holy work instead of only asking to escape them. “The trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth… might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:7).
And in the moments when the waters rise right where we stand, we cling to this: “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee” (Isaiah 43:2). Not if, but when. Not I will see you on the other side, but I will be with thee. Sometimes He parts the sea; sometimes He simply walks us through it, one step at a time, shoes wet and faith growing.
Persecution, in one form or another, has always followed the people of God. Daniel faced a lions’ den because he prayed. The apostles faced councils and prisons. Stephen’s last breath was a prayer and a shining face under flying stones (Acts 7:59–60). John turned his prison into a place of worship (Revelation 1:9–10). In vision, John heard souls under the altar cry, “How long, O Lord?” and they were told to rest “yet for a little season” (Revelation 6:9–11). Today we may not stand before emperors, but we may endure gossip that cuts like a small spear, cold shoulders for choosing Christ, or long lonely nights because we will not compromise. Jesus saw that too when He said, “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake… Rejoice, and be exceeding glad” (Matthew 5:10–12). The Man who spoke those words later wore a crown of thorns; His promises have been tested.
The future God promises is not a vague escape into mist, but a remade earth. “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17). Peter echoes, “We, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13). Prophets saw deserts blooming, crippled bodies leaping, and “sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isaiah 35:6, 10). John saw “a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal,” and a tree whose leaves are “for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:1–2). Nations once torn apart by empire, prejudice, and pride will be healed at one table. He saw a city without sirens or locks, where “there shall be no night there… for the Lord God giveth them light” (Revelation 22:5). And he saw worship as homecoming: “from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship” before the Lord (Isaiah 66:22–23). Threaded through all of it is one repeated line that keeps us from breaking: “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes” (Revelation 7:17; 21:4).
Until that day, we carry on through markets and funerals, courtrooms and kitchens, with a certain way of walking. We lament honestly—like Habakkuk, who faced empty fields, barren vines, and failing flocks, yet said, “Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:17–18). We love stubbornly—like the early believers who “continued stedfastly… in prayers” and “had all things common” (Acts 2:42, 44), turning crowded alleys into little embassies of heaven with shared bread and simple songs. We witness gently, “ready always to give an answer… with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15). We travel light—“lay aside every weight” (Hebrews 12:1), forgive as we were forgiven (Ephesians 4:32), and refuse to pay back evil with more evil (Romans 12:17–21).
We still bury our dead, but we bury them in hope. “I would not have you to be ignorant… concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Hope does not cancel sorrow; it gives it a horizon. There is a real day on heaven’s calendar when “the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
“For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry” (Hebrews 10:37). The same Jesus who wept at a graveside and stopped a funeral in its tracks will step into our sky. “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54). “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26). On that day there will be reunions language cannot carry, children lifted high who never learned to walk here, songs history could not contain. And somewhere in that multitude, amid all the hallelujahs, you will feel a touch on your cheek. Not an angel’s wing, not a servant’s towel, but the hand of God. He will not delegate your tears.
If today all you have is a whisper of a prayer—if the chair at your table is empty, if a report sits unread because you are afraid to open it, if your past tugs at you like a shadow—remember this: suffering is temporary; love is not. Evil makes noise now, but it has been judged at the cross and its time is limited. “We are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Romans 8:37). There is a day coming when God Himself will stoop like a Father and do what fathers long to do—make it right.
Until that day, walk your ordinary with the Man of Sorrows who is “acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). Fold laundry with Him. Sit in waiting rooms with Him. Stand by friends, pray over enemies, and place your tears where they belong—in His bottle, in His book. And when the night feels longest, join the old prisoner on Patmos and breathe the same simple prayer: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).
As you dig into today’s Study Notes, remember: “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth… for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous” (Joshua 1:8). If you’d like practical help to keep Scripture alive…
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Star for the Journey 
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