TURNING TO JESUS IN OUR PAIN

“He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.”  (Isaiah 53:3 NIV)

We may not get the answer to the problem of pain that we want from Jesus.  We get instead the mysterious confirmation that God suffers with us.  We are not alone.  Jesus bodily reconstructs trust in God.  Because of Jesus, I can trust that God truly understands my condition.  I can trust that I matter to God, and that God cares, regardless of how things look to me at the time.  When I begin to doubt, I turn again to the face of Jesus, and there I see the compassionate love of a God well acquainted with grief.

-- Philip Yancey in “The Bible Jesus Read”

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