Ministering to the Hurting
One of the things I love most about Jesus is His empathy for the hurting. Throughout the gospels, I see Jesus demonstrating God's love by sharing in human sorrow and drawing near to those who were suffering. He broke social norms by compassionately touching and healing the sick. In Matthew 8, He touched a man with leprosy and immediately the man was cleansed. In healing Peter's mother-in-law, He touched her hand and her fever left her. In Matthew 9, He touched the eyes of two blind men and their sight was restored. In John 11, Jesus comforts Mary and Martha and weeps over the death of His friend Lazarus (who He then proceeds to heal). How large is the heart of God? Someone wrote, and I agree, that Jesus doesn't just remove our pain, He enters into it.
In every generation, in every part of the world, people suffer. We're certainly not immune to it. We live in a fallen world where pain, suffering, and loss are common. We see it in our society today and our communities. We see it in the lives of our families, our friends, ourselves. In this month alone, I'll have attended two memorial services and conducted two others for former church members with one more in the planning stage. Death, loss, pain, sickness, injustice . . . how we have so much to grieve. Yet none of it escapes the eyes and heart of God. We can take comfort in the fact that God is near in times of sorrow and compassionate to those who weep, just as Jesus was. Psalm 34:18 says, "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
But more than just taking comfort in these things, we are called to be instruments of God's empathy to others. In Romans 12, in light of God's mercy to us, we are told what love in action looks like. Verse 15 reads, "Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn." Some versions say "weep with those who weep." This means that we're called to come alongside the hurting, not to distance ourselves from the sorrow and suffering around us. We're to actually enter into other people's pain and be an extension of God's compassion and healing. It is hard but it is beautiful the way it works. In the same way that God ministers to us when we're hurting, we have the opportunity to touch, heal, and comfort others in their time of need.
Pastor Darren
