Obsolete words. Unlike "archaic" words which are old, maybe even tired, but have simply fallen out of common use, "obsolete" words as simply no longer used at all. As one literary site puts it:
Believe it or not ... words do “disappear” ... For an English word to be considered obsolete, there can’t be any evidence of its use since 1755 – the year of publication of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary.
To that point, pastor and writer Joseph Parker (1830-1902) provided commentary on the closing words of Isaiah 35:10, which state, "Sorrow and sighing will flee away." He expressed,
"When searching for the meaning of certain words in a dictionary, you will occasionally come across a word marked as 'obsolete.' The time has come for sorrow and sighing to become obsolete in our lives. The things that mar life here and now will become part of the past."
All of human history has undoubtedly been marked by tragedies, sorrows, disappointments, and evils. Therefore, it is truly comforting to know that there will come a time when sorrow and destruction will pass away, and God Himself will wipe away all our tears. At that moment, we will experience the truth written in the holy scriptures that "the former things have passed away" (Revelation 21:4).
Are you burdened today by problems that seem insurmountable? Do you feel lonely, heartbroken, and disappointed? If you are a child of God, reflect on these affirming words:
"The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Romans 8:18).
A brighter day will come. On that beautiful day, words like lament, destruction, and tears will become not merely archaic, but utterly obsolete.
On January 27th, 2015, Auschwitz commemorated the 70th anniversary of its liberation by Allied Forces. In attendance was 81 yr old Eva Mozes Kor, an Auschwitz survivor who lost her parents, two of her sisters, her grandparents, and several aunts and uncles at the hands of the Nazis. She and her twin sister, just ten years old at the time of their capture, were among only 200 sets of twins out of 1500 who survived the vicious “medical” experiments of the infamous “Angel of Death,” Dr. Josef Mengele.
Twenty years prior, at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camp, Kor was reported to have have written a letter stating, "I had the power to forgive. No one could give me the power, or take it away from me. I refused to be a victim, and now I am free."
As the HUFFINGTON POST reports, “Eva has returned to Auschwitz, and always dances on the platform where she saw her family for the last time. ‘That's where they took away the joy of my life and my family,’ she says. ‘This way, I reclaim it.’”
Life on this sin cursed earth may rob us of our freedom, our health, our possessions, our good fortune or fame, but it cannot rob us of our joy. To possess a joyful heart and attitude is a volitional decision which we can choose to make each and every day.
Do you feel you’ve been robbed of your joy by some trial, tragedy, or circumstance? Choose today to dance upon the platform of your sorrows and reclaim it!
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:2-4).
Ever wondered what your tears really look like? Rose-Lynn Fisher did. "One day I wondered if my tears of grief would look any different from my tears of happiness - and I set out to explore them up close."
"The Topography of Tears" she says, "is a study of 100 tears photographed through a standard light microscope. The project began in a period of personal change, loss, and copious tears. … Years later, this series comprises a wide range of my own and others’ tears, from elation to onions, as well as sorrow, frustration, rejection, resolution, laughing, yawning, birth and rebirth, and many more, each a tiny history."?
In photographing these various tears, she discovered that they are not unlike snowflakes--each one unique in its composition and design. Tears of joy looked nothing like tears of sorrow. And tears of elation looked nothing like the tears we shed when chopping an onion.
They can be explained, in part, by the chemistry of our tears:
Joseph Stromberg of the Smithsonian’s Collage of Arts and Sciences explained that there are three major types of tears: basal, reflex, and psychic (triggered by emotions). All tears contain organic substances including oils, antibodies, and enzymes and are suspended in salt water. Different types of tears have distinct molecules. Emotional tears have protein-based hormones including the neurotransmitter leucine enkephalin, which is a natural painkiller that is released when we are stressed. Plus, the tears seen under the microscope are crystallized salt and can lead to different shapes and forms. So even psychic tears with the same chemical composition can look very different.
"The random compositions I find in magnified tears often evoke a sense of place," says Fisher, "like aerial views of emotional terrain."*
Although the empirical nature of tears is a chemistry of water, proteins, minerals, hormones, antibodies and enzymes, the topography of tears is a momentary landscape, transient as the fingerprint of someone in a dream. This series is like an ephemeral atlas ….
Tears are the medium of our most primal language in moments as unrelenting as death, as basic as hunger, and as complex as a rite of passage. They are the evidence of our inner life overflowing its boundaries, spilling over into consciousness. Wordless and spontaneous, they release us to the possibility of realignment, reunion, catharsis: shedding tears, shedding old skin. It’s as though each one of our tears carries a microcosm of the collective human experience, like one drop of an ocean.
*Follow the link to source above to view their "topography" to understand just how personal tears are and how unique they are to our life experience.
It seems our tears are indeed an atlas of our life experience--the hills and valleys, the quiet streams and the raging oceans. As varied and sundry as our tears may be, it is so comforting to know that God tracks every one of them. He sees them. He knows them. He feels them. Whether in joy or sorrow, we are never alone in our tears.
"You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book" (Psalm 56:8, NLT).
"For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes" (Revelation 7:17, ESV).