The Fragrance of Our Tears

A table laden with bread stood in the tabernacle in the wilderness (see Exodus 25:23-30). Twelve loaves of bread lay in order on its surface. They represented the twelve tribes of Israel—all of God’s people. The table was never to be without them, hence the name “perpetual bread.” Another translation was “the bread of faces,” as though the loaves and God were always looking at each other. We are those loaves, our lives represented by the single most important ingredient of that bread—fine flour.

The only way to transform grain into flour classified as “fine” was to first trample it under the feet of oxen or crush it beneath a threshing sledge (a raft of boards studded with sharp stone “teeth”). All this pummeling cracked open the wheat husks that hid and protected the heart of the grain. The husks carried nothing nutritionally useful so, even though they had been valuable to the grain as it grew, they needed to be removed.

With no regard for the grain’s physical or emotional attachment to those husks (okay they’re seeds, but what if they had feelings?) a miller would hurl it into the air and allow the wind to strip away what the grain held dear. Piled naked and defenseless, the grain was dumped between grinding stones and sifted repeatedly until it qualified as fine flour.

Each of us can recount similar episodes of crushing pressures, seasons when it felt everything was being stripped away. God, however, has the power to transform these hardships into something “fine” and pure in his sight.

Jesus knows the pain of this process firsthand. He endured similar threshing and winnowing and crushing as He walked the earth as a man. His experience makes Christ a worthy Advocate for us before the Father. He can empathize with our weakness because He has lived with it Himself (see Hebrews 4:14-5:2).

Something more rested on the table, however. God told Moses to add another element. “Along each row put some pure incense as a memorial portion to represent the bread and to be an offering made to the Lord by fire” (Leviticus 24:7 NIV). The type of incense he used was frankincense.

Heaped in golden spoons resting between the stacks of bread, the pale dust of frankincense added its glorious aroma to the meal on the golden table. Like the fine flour for the bread, however, the incense didn’t find an easy way into the holy place. The tough Boswellia tree of the Middle East lived in forbidding, rocky environments. When its bark was slashed open, the tree’s precious resin bled out, hardening into opaque “tears.” These tears, dried and crushed, became the holy frankincense destined to accompany the bread.

The aroma of fresh bread on the table speaks of all the good God has brought from our suffering. With it, He mingles the piney/lemony scent of crushed tears of frankincense.

Though He’s kneaded our hardship into something fine and fragrant, He’s never forgets the tears we’ve left on the table.

“You number my wanderings; put my tears into Your bottle; are they not in Your book?” (Psalm 56:8, NKJV)

Prayer: Lord, remember me as I am sifted and pressed. Keep your arms wrapped around me until I come out the other side of each hardship. Let me picture You weeping with me as You transform every trial into something good.