“Jesus sought me when a stranger…”
Some of the most beautiful words that have
ever kissed my ears…
Come Thou Fount is one of my favorite hymns,
if not my favorite. Each verse haunts me with its imagery.
Last week I felt compelled to start
re-reading the Gospels and really look into Christ’s life while He was here on
earth and His interactions with people.
One thing really stuck out to me…not only
does Christ have genuine love for His people – He has compassion for them.
In Matthew 9, while Jesus was going through
the cities and villages preaching the gospel and healing the sick, He felt
“compassion” for the people, “because they were distressed and dispirited like
sheep without a shepherd.” (v. 36)
Matthew 14 tells us Jesus was met with a
large crowd and because of the compassion
He felt for them He healed their sick (v. 14)
In Matthew 15 Jesus turned seven loaves and
“a few small fish” into a meal large enough to feed over four thousand people,
because they had been following Him for three days with nothing to eat, and He
felt compassion for them (v 32-38).
Jesus was “moved with compassion” in Matthew 20:29-34, when two blind men
cried out to Him to have mercy on them and open their eyes. Jesus responded
with touching their eyes and immediately
they regained their sight.
I love the way Mark 10:21 writes, “Looking at
him, Jesus felt a love for him…” when
talking about the rich young ruler…
The truth about me is that I am a sinner. But
because of my sinful state…I will never
wholly understand just how detrimental my sin truly is.
I will never completely understand how much I
hurt God each time I sin.
And I will never know just how great a debt I
had to God…or how truly sufficient Christ’s death on the cross was, to repay
that debt of mine...
My sin clouds my judgment each day.
In every situation I carry a hint of a haze,
causing me to be incapable of truly understanding the lost state of the world
around me.
I think the sin of the world pains God much
more than any of us will ever understand.
And yet – He pursues us…constantly.
“Ode to the One who knows who I can turn into
at any time.
He delights in shining the sunshine into the
places I want to keep dark.
And no one knows me like Him.”
(Ode by David Dunn)
He never
gives up on us.
Instead of deeming us a lost cause – He did
whatever He had to do to save us: He sent Christ to die for us. And He didn’t stop there. He incessantly walks with us
and helps us and shows us how much better He could make us. He feels compassion towards us!!
“God looked into our world – the world he
made – and saw us destroying ourselves and the world by turning away from him.
It filled his heart with pain (Genesis 6:6). He loved us. He saw us struggling
to extricate ourselves from the traps and misery we created for ourselves. And
so he wrote himself in. Jesus Christ, the God-man, born in a manger, born to
die on a cross for us. Behold who Jesus is, how he loves you and how he came to
put the world right.” – Timothy Keller, Encounters
with Jesus
If only we all saw people the way HE sees
us…how differently we would behave…
