Dear Lord, thank you for calling us to deep intimacy and mutual care in your body.
When we weep with those who weep, we find that our relationships are more meaningful, more permanent, more transforming.
But, you know, Lord, how much I struggle to do what Romans 12:15 requires. I can find people’s sadness to be unsettling. Plus I don’t want them to be in pain. So I want so much not to weep with them, but to get them to stop. Help me, gracious God, to live out this verse in my life: with my family, my colleagues, my friends, my brothers and sisters at church, and all those you bring into my life. Give me a tender heart for those who hurt and the willingness to feel their pain.
I thank you most of all, dear Lord, for entering into our suffering through the Incarnation. You have modeled the kind of costly intimacy and vulnerability that you expect of us. How good you are to us! Amen.
Watch for those today who are hurting. Encourage them. Michael.