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Sympathy!
(adapted from Octavius Winslow's, "The Tears of Christ")
"Jesus wept." John 11:35
The Creator of all worlds, the Author of all
beings, the Upholder of the universe, raining
tears of human woe and sympathy upon a
grave!
Oh, there lives not a being in the universe who
can enter into our bereavements with the sympathy,
the support, and the soothing of Christ!
They were tears of sympathy.
His heart was not only touched with a sense of
His own personal affliction, but it was also touched,
deeply touched, with sympathy for the sorrow
of others.
He wept because the mourning sisters wept.
He mingled His tears with theirs.
This is true sympathy, "weeping with those
that weep,"
making their sorrow our own. How really our Lord does
this with His people. So completely is He our Surety,
that He takes our sins and infirmities, our trials and
sorrows upon Himself, as if they were all and entirely
His own. Our sins were so completely laid upon Him,
that not one remains charged to the account of those
who believe in Jesus.
And our present griefs are so entirely absorbed in Him,
that, softened by His love, soothed by His sympathy,
supported by His grace; trial is welcome, affliction is
sweet, and the rod of a Father's chastening, buds and
blossoms into delectable fruit.
Bereaved mourner! the sympathy of Christ is
yours!
The Savior who wept at the gave of Bethany,
now shares your grief and joins your tears.
Deem not your sorrow is isolated, or that your tears
are forbidden or unseen. You have a merciful and faithful
High Priest who is touched with your present calamity.
There exists no sympathy.....
so real,
so intelligent,
so deep,
so tender,
so sanctifying
as Christ's sympathy.
And if your heavenly Father has seen it wise and
good to remove from you the spring of human pity,
it is but that He may draw you closer beneath the
wing of Jesus' compassion, presence, and love.
O child of sorrow! will not this suffice, that you
possess Christ's sympathy, immeasurable and
exhaustless as the ocean, exquisite and changeless
as His being? Yield your heart to His rich compassion!
Will Jesus be regardless of what I feel, and the
sorrows under which I groan? Oh no! The sigh
that bursts in secret from my heart is not secret
to Him; the tear that is my food day and night,
and drops unperceived and unknown, is known
and remembered by Him!
"You keep track of all my sorrows. You have
collected all my tears in Your bottle. You have
recorded each one in Your book." Psalm 56:8
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