God feels our pain

I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the one Nietzsche ridiculed as “God on the Cross.” In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?

                                         John Stott

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it is in time of dis-ease and distress

that we learn the importance of empathy

 

we learn its power when we receive it

and we learn its power when we give it

 

for it is when people are bound together by empathy

by shared pain

shared hopelessness

and even shared joy

 

that intimacy happens

and healing happens

 

without empathy these is a space

sometimes a great, abysmal space

between ourselves and others

 

if we cannot feel with them

we cannot connect with them

and we cannot respond to them in appropriate way

 

empathy is not sympathy

It is not ”Oh you poor dear”

It is “That must really hurt!”

 

It is not given from above, but is given from alongside

 

With empathy we enter into the experience of the other

we don’t protect, or hide, or observe from a distance

we participate,

 

which is why the incarnation was an amazing act of empathy

on the part of God

and why the cross is the illustration of just how completely

God is willing to enter into our pain

 

Any God who is willing to enter so completely into the depravity of this world

is a God I can trust, and turn to

 

this is a God who is with me, in my sheltering

this is a God who is with me in my anger over the carelessness of others

this is a God who can help me deal with the lack of empathy I see from people who,

          above all others, should have empathy (our religious leaders and political leaders)

this is a God who can embrace my pain

and my sorrow

 

and the pain and sorrow of the world

the pain and sorrow of those who have lost loved ones to this virus

Almost 350,000 people have die, 100,000 here in America

(think of the sheer amount of grief that (should) represents, how many fathers, mothers, children, friends are grieving those who have died)

 

I can believe the God of the cross is grieving too

and holding those grievers close

that this God is not immune to our pain

 

but is close, as close as our pain

and it is this closeness itself

this intimacy offered by an infinite God

that heals