........mine eye poureth out tears unto God.
Job 16:20
"Biochemist William Frey spent many years as head of a research team studying tears. The team found that, although tear production organs were once thought to be vestigial (left over from evolution) and no longer necessary for survival, tears actually have numerous critical functions.
Emotional tears are a response which only humans have, for only people can weep. All animals that live in air produce tears to lubricate their eyes. But only people possess the marvellous system that causes crying.
Tears are secreted by your lacrimals—tiny, sponge-like glands which rest above the eye against the
One of the most obvious functions of tears is to lubricate your eyeball and eyelid, but they also prevent dehydration of your various mucous membranes—and anyone with the ‘dry eye’ problem knows how painful this can be. A severe lack of this lubrication produces a condition requiring medication or therapy to save the victim’s eyesight. A thin layer of oil on the exposed eye reduces evaporation of tears, keeping eye tissue moist and soft. This oil is produced in your Meibomian glands located in the eyelids.
Another important function of tears is that they bathe your eyes in lysozyme, one of the most effective antibacterial and antiviral agents known. Lysozyme, from lysos, to split, and enzyme (it is an enzyme which chemically splits certain compounds) is the major source of the antigerm traits of tears. Amazingly, lysozyme inactivates 90 to 95 per cent of all bacteria in a mere five to 10 minutes. Without it, eye infections would soon cause most victims to go blind.
The reason that onions cause crying is because they release a chemical which turns into sulphuric acid on contact with the eye surface—a chemical which would damage your eyes enormously if it were not for the tear reflex which renders the suphuric acid almost harmless.
Tears normally flow constantly, and are effectively drained into the lacrimal punctum, visible as a small dot at the nasal border of the lower eyelid. The visible flow of tears on the cheeks is caused by a tear production that is greater than the drainage system can handle, causing the overflow to run down the cheek.
One more reason to realize that our marvellous body is not the result of evolutionary trial and error."
CMI