Truest Sympathy

I ask thee for a thoughtful love,
Through constant watching wise,
To meet the glad with joyful smiles,
And wipe the weeping eyes,
A heart at leisure from itself,
To soothe and sympathize.
-Anna L. Waring

How can I soothe and sympathize? There are many around me aching and reeling. Some with pain I cannot begin to imagine. Others with loss I have too have tasted. Can words do anything to speak into their hurt?

My words cannot. Some pain is beyond any human being's ability to console. A friend, in the midst of her own suffering, reminded me of this verse this week: "When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul." (Psalm 94:19) Only His consolations bring the relief we need.

And so, we are quiet. We wipe their tears and enter into their pain the best we know how—so that we also cry tears with them. We ache, and we know that it is not enough. So in our inadequacy, we cry out to Jesus to soothe their breaking hearts. To do what we cannot.

His humanity and His divinity—the hypostatic union—is the truest balm for wounds too deep for words. A suffering Savior. He is “acquainted with grief,” and He is mighty to save.

Christ…was hungry as man, and yet He is the Bread of Life; He was athirst as man, and yet He says, "Let him who is athirst come unto me and drink"; He was weary, and yet He is our rest; He pays tribute, and yet He is a King; He is called a devil, and yet He casts out devils. He prays, and yet hears prayer; He weeps, and dries our tears; He is sold for thirty pieces of silver, and redeems the world. He is "led as sheep to the slaughter," and is the Good Shepherd; He is mute like a sheep, and yet He is the Everlasting Word; He is the "man of sorrows," but He heals our pains; He is nailed to a Tree and dies upon it, and by the Tree restores us to life; He has vinegar to drink, and changes the water into wine; He lays down His life, and takes it again; He dies, and gives life, and by dying destroys death.

(Gregory of Nazianzus)

 

 

 

Praise God for our sympathizing Savior. May we be His hands and feet--"A heart at leisure from itself, to soothe and sympathize."