Turning Tears to Wine

     God turns tears to joy-----mourning to dancing . What a boundless God he is. Lately he's been giving me much revelation from the Psalms. The Psalms are the human heart made poetry; they run the gamut of emotion, from fear to frustration all the while managing  to honor the Lord with every verse. In Psalm 58, verse 8, David was especially sorrowful. He notes to God "You have kept count of my tossings." You maybe familiar with his next words "Put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book?" (ESV)

  Of this bottle I'd always envisioned a tiny vial. Perhaps crystal, with  swoops of color across the  curve.  Today God corrected this image. In the tiny notes of my NIV translation Bible, was an alternate translation of "bottle." The NIV suggests the word  also be translated as "wineskin." God's bottle for our tears is a wineskin-----bottleshaped skin that holds the drink that makes us glad. 

  
   Didn't Jesus turn water to wine and aren't our tears as salty water? God promised through several prophets to make new wine overflow. New wine, as you may have guessed, is fresh and it was also known as "sweet wine"[1].  Sweet, new wine was also highly inebriating.  Wine is a symbol of the Holy Spirit(Eph 5:18). When God pours out his Spirit in the New Covenant, he brings joy and sweetness to his people that is intoxicating (Acts 2). This morning God gave me a greater picture of his tear-bottle. Perhaps he turns those tears into the wine of the Spirit. Maybe when we are heart broken, he empties out that wineskin of pain, then pours the happy mixture over us.  He gives us the Holy Spirit and intoxicates us with the joy of his love.


   [1] "Strong's Greek: 1098. γλεῦκος (gleukos) -- Sweet New Wine." Strong's Greek: 1098. γλεῦκος (gleukos) -- Sweet New Wine. Accessed August 02, 2016. http://biblehub.com/greek/1098.htm.