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The sympathetic love of the Incarnate God!
From Winslow's "Christ's Love at the Grave of Lazarus"
"Jesus wept." John 11:36
These are among the most wonderful words
recorded in the Bible. They mark the most
exquisitely tender, touching, and expressive
incident in His whole life.
"Jesus wept," wept from emotion, wept from
sympathy. Is there a more consolatory, soothing
view of Christ's love than this?
It is a compassionate, sympathizing, weeping love.
The sympathy of Jesus never wearies or slumbers,
it never chills or forgets. It entwines with our every
cross, attaches to our every burden, and frosts
with sparkling light, each darkling cloud. It is not the
vapid sentiment of fiction, nor the morbid sympathy
of romance. It is a divine-human reality. It is
the sympathetic love of the Incarnate God!
Let your faith, then, repose with confidence on
the reality of Christ's sympathy with your grief.
Oh how sacred and precious are the tears of divine
love, the tears of Jesus! Soothed and sustained by
such a sympathy as Christ's, we may well drink
meekly the cup our Father mingles; we can well
afford to be severed from all other sympathy, and
weep out our sorrow in lonely places; Jesus weeping
with us by the couch of languor, by the bed of
darkness, and at the grave of buried love.
O you afflicted one, tossed with tempest and not
comforted, refuse not this cup of consolation which
the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, would give you; the
sympathy of your Lord and Savior, your Friend and
Brother in the time of your calamity. Yield yourself
to its irresistible power, and it will draw you
submissively to His feet, and hush to rest your
sobbing heart upon His bosom!
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