What To Do in the Valley of Tears

Psalms 84:6 KJV

Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools.

Years ago I read a sermon, based out of this passage, which urged that, when going through a time of sorrow, do something so that the next person in the same circumstances might find comfort.

The word Baca means tears.  Some have suggested that there may have been a valley named Baca, so named for the lack of water there. Whether such a suggestion has merit or not, it is certainly true that most people endure some valley of:

• Tears
• Sorrow and
• Lamentation

in their lifetime. When those valleys happen, and for however long they might last, the most profitable thing we can do is to turn the focus off of our own troubles and attempt to do something to help others.

It is akin to the words of 1 Corinthians 1:4 "Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." We can bemoan our sorry condition or we can try to use it for the good of others.

In some respects we could look at all of life as a valley of Baca.

• The earth is cursed
• We are born dead in trespasses and sins and
• Once saved, are aliens and pilgrims on the earth

Every day, through ministry, prayers, our conversations with others, in taking leadership, in serving country, or in writing materials that may be read generations later, we have opportunity to make things better for those who will walk in this valley of tears called life later on.

I noticed something in reading this time around that I am not sure I have meditated upon previously. The passage teaches us to dig a well but it is later rains that fill it up. The man passing through the valley has no power to and is not responsible to put the water in the well. He only makes a place for the water to reside.

• My job is not to bring actual comfort to another. I can only rarely and temporarily do that anyway. My job is to prepare a means for the comfort to be delivered.
• My job is not to save a soul from hell. My job is to tell them the gospel and it will be a God who saves them.
• My job is not to illuminate a listening congregation to the truths of the Bible. My job is to open the Bible and preach what I am learning, all the while believing God will illuminate the hearers as He pleases.
• My job is not to tell jokes and make the hurting one laugh.; My job is to be there and let the love of God spread from my heart to theirs.