Responding to the Grief of Others With Compassion: We Are Called to Walk as Jesus Walked

How do we respond to the grief of others? Cold and heartless? Direct and firm with our knowledge of God’s Truths? Or like Jesus, Who, moved and troubled over the consequences of sin, weeps with compassion – a visual demonstration over the grief of others. Jesus laments with us as well whenever we too experience the brokenness and sorrow of this sin sick world. He is nearest to His saints enduring the fires of afflictions. Just ask Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego when you get to heaven. Scripture tells us in Daniel 4:24-25 (NIV): “Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, ‘Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?’ They replied, ‘Certainly, O king.’ He said, ‘Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.’” “Unbound and unharmed” is how Jesus desires to carry us through these trials of our sin soaked and sick world. When sorrows hit, you need only to call His Name and He will carry you through - whenever you call. 

God desires for His children’s attitudes and actions to be like the Lord Jesus’, Who was to be the firstborn among many brothers. Always through His power and for His glory. The Apostle Paul writes in Philippians 2:5-8 (NIV): “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross!” Our God has no limitations and through our Lord Jesus He brings that limitlessness to us in His endless mercy, grace and love and His desire is for us to demonstrate this same mercy, grace and love to all in our spheres of influence – again, through His power and for His glory. This is not natural to the flesh and seeking to do this in our own strength we will eventually fail. But God never will.   

When those we know and love are walking through the “Valley of Baca” (tears), God desires for us to encourage them with the encouragement and comfort we have received - taking them from “strength to strength”. Agan, the Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 (NIV): “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.” 

Remember, God is the Source of all true comfort and encouragement. He is also the Father of compassion and He is tender in mercy and kindness.