With Pain and Love
1 Samuel 16:17b - “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
It’s far too easy to size someone up, generate a first impression of them in our minds, and come to a conclusion about someone by their appearances, or a quick exchange of words, or observing their non-verbals. We look at them with our eyes and hear with our ears, but we don’t fully understand the person across from us. They are a whole world of experiences that we are not privy to, but yet, we are so inclined to assess someone in an instant to judge them. Once we yield to thoughts of judgment about another person, then every future interaction has the potential to become another opportunity to confirm the bias that we are looking for.
However, this external analysis is not how God sees us. He doesn’t see us as the person that we try to present to everyone else. He sees who we truly are in our innermost thoughts, contemplations, aspirations, insecurities, and shortcomings. He looks in our hearts and has compassion on us. For when no one else understands us or they keep getting us wrong, Christ can get us right.
Despite all of the mistakes we have made, the idiosyncrasies we have, the pain we’ve been through, and the learned behaviors, God sees a person He created and He loves us dearly. It was not enough for Him to simply express His love for us with words or writings, but He showed His love by dying on the cross for us and overcoming death that we may have life in Him.
He knocks at the door of our hearts and if we open to Him, He enters into that microcosm of our existence. He is willing to work with us, show mercy towards us, and impart His grace in our lives. If we open the door to Him, He enters our world and can heal us. He can heal our hearts and minds. He can change us with His redemptive love and save us.
But why would the Lord of all creation want to love us and show His kindness towards us? Because He can see us as we truly are. He knows what we can be by His grace. He can see our full potential, He understands our pain, He knows our suffering, He hears our weeping, and He knows our worries. He doesn’t see us as other people see us who misunderstand us, but He knows who we are, who we have been, and who we will be. Everything about us is open and visible before Him and how wonderful that is. For He is not someone who cannot understand our suffering or empathize with our pain, but He knows us intimately having become incarnate Himself. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:16). He discerns our thoughts, our anxieties, our hopes, and everything that has happened in our lives which has molded us into the person we are now and He is not deterred from loving us.
What if God granted to us the gift of being able to see into the hearts of one another? Would we still judge each other? Would we condemn one another? Or would we be immeasurably humbled to see how much people are suffering and fighting their own battles which we know nothing about? Would our own hearts hurt with pain and love for one another? Would the experiences of others make us understand them infinitely better so that we could truly love them as we ought? Would we pour out our hearts in earnest prayer for them?
"True Christians, in the souls of whom Christ lives, are unable to do anything else except love all people, even enemies." - St. Porphyrios