God does not want to turn the Valley of Tears into a better, more hospitable place for godless people to live. God wants to turn godless people into People of God. God is trying to turn sour lemons into sweet oranges. He is trying to convert us not our circumstances. He wants us to convert our circumstances. He is trying to turn us into sugar cubes so we can dilute the bitterness of the Valley of Tears with the sweet syrup of love.
God's rescue plan makes us involuntary participants in a contact sport. It puts us in intimate contact with the truth - both the sweet truth and the sour truth. God is supremely confident in the liberating power of the truth. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" . Unfortunately, the sour truth plays rough. God did not want Adam and Eve to come into contact with the sour truth in the Valley of Tears. He warned them . However, representations of reality do not pack the same persuasive punch as the reality itself. Adam and Eve disregarded God's warning. Now, in the Valley of Tears, we put our fingers into the flames to learn for ourselves that the fire is hot. We are learning the sour truth the hard way by intimate contact with it.
The Valley of Tears is the vessel that holds the sour truth. The sour truth plays rough. It chews us up into bits and pieces. We want God to remove the bitterness from the Valley of Tears or us from the bitterness. God does not (John 17:15). God wants us to dilute the bitterness of the Valley of Tears with love as sugar cubes dilute the bitterness of a cup of bad coffee. Jesus started the process. However, he did not complete it. Our job is to complete it. Jesus was the first drop (1 John 4:19) (John 10:27-30). Our job is to turn the drop into a flood (Matthew 13:32) (Genesis 6:17). The goal is to inundate the Valley of Tears with love. The gardens of the new Eden grow drop by drop. Fill the earth with the knowledge that God loves us as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9) (Habakkuk 2:14). Only by loving do we fill the earth with the knowledge of God. Only by loving do we ascend from the level of the most miserable and hideous of loveless beast to the level of our loving God - from the basement of the kingdom of God to the penthouse.