What Tears Look Like Under a Microscope

Photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher spent years capturing human tears under a microscope for her project The Topography of Tears. What she found startled scientists: tears of grief look nothing like tears of joy. Tears shed in mourning form jagged, fractured patterns — like shattered glass or cracked earth. Tears of laughter create smooth, flowing crystalline structures resembling snowflakes or ferns.

Every tear carries a chemical signature of its cause. Emotional tears contain cortisol, the stress hormone, along with leucine enkephalin, a natural painkiller. Your body is literally purging pain when you weep.

Now consider what John sees in Revelation 21. The Almighty doesn't merely stop the crying — He wipes every tear from their eyes. The Greek word for "wipe" suggests a tender, deliberate gesture, like a parent cupping a child's face after a nightmare. God doesn't just end the grief. He removes every trace of it — the cortisol, the fractured patterns, the chemical residue of a broken world.

Then comes the staggering promise: "There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Not reformed. Not improved. Passed away. The very conditions that produce tears of grief will cease to exist. In the new creation, if tears flow at all, they will carry only the crystalline beauty of unending joy in the presence of the Most High.