With apologies to Johnny Nash …

The last several months have been marked for eternity by the passing of three fathers. My wife’s Dad, Edmund Norrrell, died on January 30th. My own Daddy, Norman W. Fincher, died on February 14th. And, our dear friend & brother in Christ, Dean Barriault, died in our home on February 25th. Trying to put things in perspective over the intervening days, a post by Al Hsu helped me put some of it into words. His article here for Christianity Today isn’t about death at all. But when I read his words:

… I blinked several times, and my vision wavered back and forth. Clear, blurry, clear, blurry. Then I realized what was happening. While singing I had been tearing up, moved by God’s call, and the thin layer of water on my eyeballs functioned like contact lenses. The tears had been making my vision clearer.

…when God moves me to tears, I begin to see more clearly.

What I saw & felt & learned over these many hard days, weeks, & months is that “the tears had been making my vision clearer“!  Thank you God for three men who loved you and showed it in their lives and in their final days. Thank you, God for the tears you brought to help me see YOU and my family and friends more clearly. And… thank you, God for the tears you shed as Jesus went to the Cross, died, and rose again so that there will be no more tears!

Revelation 21:4

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.