Ah, the chance to sit and read for a few minutes Sunday afternoon.  The combination of no church meetings, a touch of sickness, and a Panthers football game that was hardly worth undivided attention gave me the chance to finish up a marvelous book Betty McGee, our parish nurse, loaned me a year or more ago.

Titled Blue, and written by Hickory author Joyce Meyer Hostetter, the book tells the story of “The Miracle of Hickory,” western North Carolina’s polio hospital that opened in 1944 and closed in 1945.  The story is told as the personal memoir of a 13-year-old girl, Ann Fay Honeycutt.  It’s personal for Betty as well, since she was a polio survivor who was treated at the hospital when she was baby.

Ann Fay befriends a “colored” girl named Imogene in the emergency ward.  The two girls do not understand the barriers that subsequently divide them; nor do they buy into the logic behind those barriers.  They find much in common, including their faith.

But their faith finds expression in different ways, and Imogene is surprised to learn that Ann Fay has never heard of God’s bottle collection.  “Well, maybe white peoples just never needed to know.  But my peoples – we have so many tears, we knows all about it from way back.”

Imogene goes on to explain:  “My momma told me that God has got a whole row of bottles up on His big fine windowsill – one for every one of His childrens.  She say when we cries, he catches our tears in His big gentle hands and pours them into our own personal bottle.”

Later that night when Ann Fay cries herself to sleep, she comforts herself in knowing that “my tears was rolling right into the hand of God.”

As Isaiah relates the roller coaster of God’s relationship with his people, he says, “In all their distress he too was distressed” (Isa 63:9).  God wanted his compassion to draw his people closer, but still they rebelled (v. 10).  The distance between us and God is never due to his disinterest in us.  He bottles our tears as his own and longs for us to turn to him in our time of need.