2020 has been a very challenging year! Now, let me state the not so obvious; God doesn’t sympathize with us. 

God doesn’t just see and understand what’s going on with us. As pastor and writer Adam Hamilton shares in his book Incarnation: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas, “God doesn’t just imagine what it’s like to be human.” That’s sympathy. “How could an all-powerful God really know what it’s like to be weak, afraid, or hurt?”

But God does know!

So, with God, it’s not sympathy; it’s empathy! God knows and has experienced what we’re going through and feeling.  God empathizes with us… with you! How is it possible for almighty God to empathize with fallible human beings? 

“…Christ Jesus: Though he was in the form of God, he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit. But he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave and by becoming like human beings.”       

(Philippians 2:5-7, CEB)

Again, as Adam Hamilton shares, “In Jesus, God became human flesh. God wept. God bled. God suffered. God died. There is something profoundly moving about God actually knowing what we are experiencing as humans. God became fully human in Jesus Christ.  In Jesus, God experiences all of who we are. 

And this, my friends, makes all the difference! 

Your partner on the journey,

Pastor Steve