While I have a thought to think, let me not forget thee;
while I have a tongue to move, let me mention thee with delight;
while I have a breath to breathe, let it be after thee and for
thee; while I have a knee to bend, let it bow daily at thy
footstool; and when by sickness thou confinest me to my couch, do
thou make my bed, and number my pains, and put all my tears into
thy bottle. Amen.
From The Saints' Everlasting Rest, Richard
Baxter (1615 -91)
RICHARD BAXTER was an English Puritan leader in the 17th century.
With many interruptions, he continued his ministry throughout the
Civil War, and helped to bring about the restoration of the
monarchy in 1660.
He turned down a bishopric, was imprisoned twice for his faith,
and was never far from controversy and persecution. Throughout his
life, he valued his integrity over advancement, and even over his
own survival.
Baxter's prayer holds within it a prevailing sense of his own
mortality. Life - the ability to think and speak and breathe - is a
temporary gift, to be used to worship God. Perhaps his view of life
as a gift rather than a right helped him to live and work
courageously through one of the most turbulent periods in English
history.
Baxter's image of God's collecting tears in a bottle is
compelling, telling of God's capacity to care minutely about each
of us, and to gather the cries of the whole of humanity into his
loving care. It is reminiscent of the line from "O little town of
Bethlehem": "The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee
tonight." God meets us where we are, where we need him, in that
single baby, born in a stable.
The bottle comes from Baxter's creative imagination, but the
idea of God's collecting tears is, of course, biblical. In
Revelation 21.4, we hear that "He will wipe away every tear from
their eyes, and death shall be no more."
We have three small children, and so tear-wiping is something
that happens regularly in our house. It can be perilous. Try to do
it during a tantrum, and you are liable to get kicked in the face;
but if you time it right, wiping away tears can be an effective way
of comforting. You have to get down to the child's level, and
concentrate carefully. It is a way of saying: "I'm here; I love
you; and I'm sorry that you're sad."
As adults, we tend to wipe away our own tears - if we let
ourselves shed them at all. Perhaps the image in Baxter's prayer of
God's collecting tears can remind us that, no matter how grown-up
we try to be, each of us is God's precious child.
We none of us know how long we have on this earth. Baxter is
keenly aware of this in his prayer, but he does not see it as a bad
thing. It serves to remind us that we are made to praise God, and
that we are never far from his endless comfort, as he gathers us
into his loving care, and our tears into his bottle.
The Revd Catherine Pickford is Team Rector in the Benwell
Team Ministry, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.