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Thursday, December 5, 2013

Sympathy with Humanity

I wasn't complaining. Though it sounds a bit like it now...
On a peninsula of rock jutting like a castle between a gorge and a vale I stood, breathless from the scramble. Hands in my pockets and with eager step, if heavy heart.

Perhaps a few will understand when I say I carry on my heart at any given time a thousand reasons to laugh, and a thousand reasons to weep. Most all of them with first and last names.
Such is the cost of loving humanity, I suppose.

Anyway, this post isn't about me.



I'd just gained the crest, just finished a brief review comparing the power at my disposal with my far-too-often dismal performance, just realized afresh how deep mercy reaches, and
It's not fair, You know? I deserve the lot of the criminal, but here I stand in converse with The Infinite, while people I love slowly die in the clutches of fear....
Can you see why happiness means nothing to me when it's mine alone?
...So, it's all or nothing.
Either I am to be completely at Your disposal to help the weak, comfort the wounded, and actually lift, and heal, and effect a lasting change, or...
Or, I want out right. now. 
Because it hurts too much to be in sympathy with humanity.
Ever have you been in that place or time when suddenly every tree in the wood seemed to drop its jaw and gape? and you wonder:

what did I do. What did I just say?

The only answer is this electric silence.

I glance one way and the other. Wait.

He never says. But suddenly it's as if every snowflake has recovered from shock and found a voice.
He would know.
He would know just exactly how much it hurts to be in sympathy with humanity. And He chose it, over the alternative, not because there was no alternative. For Him, there's no "out."

For Him, there's no wanting out.
"For we have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities."  Hebrews 4:15 


13 comments:

  1. And there is underestimated power in a life fully dedicated to helping hurting humanity. True, He is the source of all comfort, but He uses human hands. Maybe part of the reason He lets us hurt with others is so we will be able to comfort them with His comfort.

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  2. Powerful... Thank you.
    Have you heard about the book "God in Pain"? I strongly recommend it. It gave me a new perspective on the pain of God through Jesus. "His (Jesus) suffering is unique in at least this sense: He is the only being who has suffered both as man and as God. Humanity has suffered; God has suffered. But until the Incarnation the suffering of humanity and the suffering of God were experientially mutually exclusive....

    But Jesus knows both."

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  3. Mhmm.

    Because there's a gap to be bridged between empathy and sacrifice. It is one thing to feel for humanity, it is another to suffer for it. It's the risk of allowing the pain to become tangible that brings moments of electric silence... but after all if we never give real sweat, and blood and tears, were our feelings anything more than feeling?

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    Replies
    1. this mystery... identifying, but unable to be fully identified. That's where we differ from Him...

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  4. Maybe this is what it really means to be His heads, feet, heart.... To not just touch a life, but to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. To have this heart in human flesh must be one of the great fears of darkness.

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  5. Oh I've just been there! maybe not a thousand names, but to me even one is so heavy.
    I think it does us good to feel it though, to feel one drop of the Flood He carries. 'else we may never know.

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  6. Oh I've just been there! maybe not a thousand names, but to me even one is so heavy.
    I think it does us good to feel it though, to feel one drop of the Flood He carries. 'else we may never know.

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  7. Well expressed. I was blessed and moved reading it.

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