Sympathy seeks to observe and understand from our own limited perspectives while empathy is the ability to share the feelings of another. Empathy doesn’t mean to feel pity for someone, or to wish you could help solve all their problems. Real empathy means you feel the pain that they feel. You have the capacity to put yourself into their world by truly envisioning yourself journeying their road.  

How often are we truly able to empathize with the suffering of others? Jesus has real, earthly, physical, spiritual, and emotional empathy in our suffering. Like us, He was “hard-pressed but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. (2 Corinthians 4:8)” Jesus feels your pain. He longs to show you, through His great love, that His promises for you will sustain you through your suffering.

Read Isaiah 53 and meditate on the suffering Jesus endured for you and me.