“A broken and a contrite heart—these, O God, You will not despise” (Ps 51:17). Sometimes tears are liquid prayers, heard in heaven.
Publius Statius, 1st Century Roman poet, wrote of an “Altar of Pity” in the Athenian Agora. He says: “There was in the midst of the city an altar belonging to no god of power; …the wretched made it sacred; never did she lack a new suppliant…night and day may one approach…. No costly rites are hers; she accepts no incense flame, no blood deep-welling; tears flow upon her altar…. The distressed are ever near her, …hither came flocking those defeated in war and exiled from their country, kings who had lost their realms and those guilty of grievous crime, and sought for peace.”
Yet the altar that was wet with those tears, alas, was nothing but cold marble. There is no peace apart from the Prince of Peace. We, by contrast, come not to an Altar of Pity but to a Throne of Grace on which sits the One who is both Man of Sorrows and God of Mercy.