Take My Hand, Precious Lord

"Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand,
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn; Thru the storm, thru the night,
Lead me on to the light; Take my hand, precious Lord, Lead me home"
(from the hymn by Thomas Dorsey)

Thomas Dorsey was born just outside of Atlanta, Georgia in 1899. He grew up singing the blues and jazz and by the 1920's became nationally recognized as a leader in this new style of music.
Thomas related the following story - "In 1932, I was 32 years old and living with my wife Nettie in Chicago's south side. One August afternoon I had to go to St. Louis for a revival. Nettie was in the last month of pregnancy with our first child. I didn't want to go, something was strongly telling me to stay, but people were expecting me and I went. The next night, the crowd called on me to sing again and again. When I finally sat down, a messenger ran up with a Western Union telegram. I ripped it open and saw the words "Your wife is dead". I rushed to a phone and called home. All I could hear was "Nettie is dead". When I got back, I learned that Nettie had given birth to a boy. Yet that night, the baby had also died. I buried them both, then fell apart. For days I closeted myself. I felt that God had done me an injustice. I didn't want to serve him anymore. I was lost in grief.
A friend took me to a neighborhood music school one day and left me alone in a room with a piano. It was quiet and the late afternoon sun shined through the window. I sat at the piano and began to browse over the keys. Something happened to me. I felt at peace. I found myself playing a melody, one I've never heard or played before and words came into my head. As the word and music came to me, it seemed that my heart was also healed. I learned from that tragic experience that when we are in our deepest grief, when we feel farthest from God, this is when He is closest."
(taken from "Sing With Feeling by Robert Jay Taylor,Jr.)

Tears in a Bottle

In the small village of Menands, New York, there is a little rural cemetery. In the middle of the cemetery there stands a monument to Sara Weed. The monument depicts Sara cradling a bottle to her face. In the early 1900's, a newspaper ran a story about poor Sara, saying that the bottle was a bottle of booze and that the monument showed that she was a slave to alcohol. The article went on to say that the monument's inscription which read "Sara and her babe" referred to the bottle as her "babe" and that the monument was put up by her husband, William, as a warning to everyone to stay away from the demon rum that killed poor Sara.
But actually the truth about this monument is much more poignant and will serve to illustrate a tender lesson. You see, the inscription refers to Sara, wife of William Weed, who along with her unborn child, died in childbirth at the age of 27. The bottle she is holding is a tear bottle, which she is crying into and collecting her tears.
It is difficult to say exactly when the first tear bottles came into being. They were fairly common in Roman times, around the time of Christ, when mourners filled small glass bottles with tears and placed them in burial tombs as symbols of respect. Tear bottles reappeared during the Victorian period of the 19th century, when those mourning the loss of loved ones would collect their tears in bottles with special stoppers that allowed the tears to evaporate. When all the tears had evaporated, the mourning period would end. In some American Civil War stories, women were said to have cried into tear bottles and saved them until their husbands returned from battle. Their collected tears would show the men how much they were adored and missed.
Did you know that the Bible speaks about how God collects our tears in His bottle? (Psalm 56:8) What a comforting thought that we have a loving, caring, wonderful God who hears us when we cry and collects each of our tears as something very precious to Him. This God of the universe - who looks over millions and millions of his creatures - yet He hears each and everyone of our tears.