"The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe
"Care, Bear, Share"
"The Lord is gracious and full of compassion" (Psalm 145:8).
Compassion involves more than simply caring. It rather means bearing and sharing, namely, the pains, challenges, and difficulties of others are more than felt.
"Surely He hath born our griefs and carried our sorrows" (Isaiah 53:4).
How full our God must be of compassion to have sent His beloved Son into the world for the purpose of bearing our griefs and sorrows, and even more, "His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree" (I Peter 2:24). The Lord Jesus Christ did not merely view our plight with concern from Heaven. He rather entered into the fray of our lostness and its dire consequences. He cared and He shared in the consequences of sin, to the degree of suffering of God's righteous wrath and judgment. "We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted (Isaiah 53:4).
A Lord like this can surely be trusted with all our hearts, in all our challenges. He knows what we go through, not simply as a matter of infinite insight, but also of intimate involvement. As God, He knows. As man, He experiences. This includes the present challenges we all face, of whatever nature or measure. Our sorrows far more than matter to Him. He rather bears them in ways we cannot begin to understand, but which we must know and believe as a matter of truth and faith. "We have not a High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities" (Hebrews 4:15).
Few realities regarding the nature and character of God more lead and enable us in this present world. According to His wisdom, not all our sorrows can be quickly removed from our hearts. Some thorns must remain for reasons of growth, correction, and in terms of the present consideration, our own capacity to "bear ye one another's burdens of others, and so fulfill the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2). The Lord Jesus greatly honors us to serve as His "vessels of mercy," knowing His compassion as comfort to ourselves, and also administering it to others (Romans 9:23). He leads us to care about the pains of others, and not only to care, but to bear and to share. Thereby, God reveals Himself through us in a particularly vivid and influential expression of who He is, and who human beings are to Him.
"Full of compassion." May we grow in this beautiful glory of our Heavenly Father's heart, our Savior's involvement, and the Holy Spirit's working within us to personally know such grace, and to powerfully experience it for others. God will be greatly glorified thereby, and the compassion we receive will be the compassion we bestow, as like our Lord, we care, bear, and share.
"Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage."
(Hebrews 214-15)
Weekly Memory Verse
O send out Thy light and Thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill, and to Thy tabernacles. Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy.
(Psalm 43:3-4)
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