September 2, 2009
“The Sympathetic Christ"
Dear Friend,
Because we are humans we experience and feel life in a variety of ways. Even though this diversity of experience can be categorized by the ideas of race, gender and class, we still sense our own uniqueness. Where we share life feelings and experience with others, it is easy for us to sympathize. But where our life experience looks and feels very different from others, we create rationalizations instead of sympathizing with them. All this is especially true when we dislike, disdain or despise the ideas and behaviors of others.
Christ shared the human experience in ways very familiar to us and very different from us. He does not sympathize with us through the categories of race, gender and class. He sympathizes with us as one who endured the tests of life. When you are tested by relationships, careers, finances and weaknesses of body and soul, please remember that these tests do not isolate you from Christ. He invites you to look to Him for grace and strength because of His great sympathetic soul.
When I think about Christ in this way I feel challenged to become more like Him. I desire to be less critical and more sympathetic with others whose life experience is different than mine.
I suggest two prayers:
- A prayer to connect with the sympathetic soul of Christ.
- A prayer for a new capacity to sympathize with people around us.
Doc
Dr. Dave Collings
Lead Pastor
Christ Church
