God with Us

What does God feel as He sees these calamities, this flood of human suffering that washes our globe in an ocean of pain? Even those of us, His children, that have not felt the depths of horror, pain, and despair that so many of His other children daily do, have had our hearts rent to some extent. We hope and dream; we despair and cry. Our propensity to chose our own path, often at the expense of others, is a tragedy of cosmic proportions. In all of our broken homes, all of our wars, all of our starvation and death, where is God?

It's easy to feel God is far removed, somehow remotely indifferent to the suffering we mortals have brought upon ourselves. I think this might be one of the biggest reasons God came to earth in a human body... Jesus... To identify with us in our suffering and show us how he really feels about our pain. Look at how Jesus responded to the suffering people He encountered. Far from ignoring or avoiding them, He touched the ones who the rest of us would rather not. One of the pictures I've come to cherish is that of Jesus outside Lazarus's tomb. Surrounded by people mourning the death that we still aren't used to, even after centuries of it affecting our lives almost daily in some form or another, Jesus cried. These people He created and... loves... had messed things up so badly, come so far from the beautiful life He had intended for them, and His heart broke for them. He lowered Himself to speak in their language of pain, their language of tears. Doesn't His doing so bring dignity and redemption to suffering?

The God of the universe cries over our mangled hearts.