I think everyone at some point has struggled with the loneliness of feeling misunderstood. While we most often attribute that feeling to our confusing teenage years, it rarely stays confined to just that time. For most of us, there will be ongoing aches and pains that feel unseen and misunderstood. We long to be seen and known.
One of the greatest gifts Jesus gives us outside of salvation is his ability to relate to us. There is nothing we can experience that Jesus doesn’t intimately know himself. The book of Hebrews expands on this in a truly poignant way.
“So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same gratings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.” (Hebrews 4:14-16)
There is nothing, nothing you can experience that Jesus doesn’t intimately know the pain of at its core.
Fear, hunger, loneliness, anger, despair, betrayal, grief, hurt. All of it. He experienced all of it.
Even my fear of abandonment is known to Jesus, calling out to God the Father in his darkest hour asking why he was forsaken.
There is something so incredibly comforting about the notion that Jesus knows. He knows. When we have those moments of crying out unintelligibly in our sufferings, he knows what we’re feeling. Not sympathy, empathy. He meets in our pain.
What other god in any other religion took such pains to know his creation so intimately? What other god ever cared to? There’s something so incredibly loving in the time Jesus took in his earthly life. He didn’t just zap down, die for our sins, and zap back. He stopped. He stayed a while. He took part in human life in all its individual nuances and rhythms. Sometimes we Christians can get so focused on the fact that Jesus died for us that we forget he also lived with us. That in itself was a stunningly beautiful gift.
Jesus took the time to know, and that is everything when he speaks to us. Because he took the time to know all the hurts and aches of human life, we can take him at his word when he tells us we can make it. There’s no room for us to say “Well maybe that was true for you, but you have no idea what I’m going through.” He already knows. He’s already gone through it. If he’s telling you you can make it, he’s telling you that from seeing his own path through the same struggle.
It’s what makes Jesus the ultimate leader to follow. Other gods from other beliefs have you jumping for their praise and impossible tasks to complete for their favor. Jesus waded through the worst of everything this world has to offer to better lead us. He leads from loving experience, from actually caring about those who are following him.
Bearing that in mind, our struggles won’t necessarily get any easier, but they are now in perspective for how understood we are. That, in its own way, lightens our load.
We are not being led by a God ignorant to our sufferings. We are being led by a savior who took the time to intimately know exactly what he’s asking of us and knows the way through it.
Take heart, Christian, you are seen and known.
Let’s find some joy,
A
Avalon Robinson Author 