Joining Him

 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.  Matthew 23:37..."Ask God where He's grieving in your life and in the world and join Him there." Alicia Britt Chole

The portrait of Christ standing atop the heights and looking down upon Jerusalem always moves me. I can sense His broken heart over the rejection of the city, nation, and people He came to save. I can't help but think of eternal tragedy experienced by those who rejected Him and the consequences of their rejection. I can almost feel His sorrow. The thing of it is though, I tend to always keep this portrait of Christ in a kind of compartment. I know He still grieves over the nations and their ongoing rejection of Him, but somehow, it doesn't seem so personal. Yet the quote from Chole written above pierces me as I contemplate it. When Jesus looked down upon the city, He didn't just see the crowds of people. He saw the individuals as well. The nation of Israel and its religious and political leaders had rejected Him, denied Him. So too would, at least for a moment, His disciples. Again, I can contemplate all of this from afar, but it still doesn't bring me into understanding the depths of His sorrow.....until I realize He continues to look upon this world, and my place in it, and grieves over how we continue to reject and deny Him in so many different ways. That's not a realization we come by easily. I can understand His sorrow over the sewage of our culture. I can also understand His grief over the waywardness of those around me. I am too often blind to how my ways may so often grieve His heart. But if I am to be all He saved me to be, I need to know, and I need to be made new in all of those places.

We're told in Scripture to not grieve the Holy Spirit, but that may be one of the most ignored commands in His Word. We grieve Him all the time and in so many ways. We don't notice and sadly, we're not much concerned about it. We figure His grace and love will cover it. They do, when we confess and repent of it. Someone said that we can't really enter into the fullness of His salvation until we truly experience sorrow over our sin. That is key to experiencing the fullness of His grace. For that reason we will not become truly conscious of our grieving Him until we begin to understand how deeply our indifference, our cold hearts, our selfish living, wounds His heart and Spirit. 

Chloe exhorts us to join Him in His grief over the world and over us, but we can't and we won't until we feel and understand that grief ourselves. That means we need to invite Him, cry out to Him to open our eyes to see and our hearts to understand. When we do, we can join Him in those places as He brings healing to us, and then through and with us, healing and salvation to the human race He came to save and deliver.

We may know what's wrong in the world, and even in His church. Do we know what's wrong in us? Do we know where we're grieving His Spirit? Can we join Him in those places? Can we grieve with Him and then rejoice with Him as He works in us and then through us to minister healing and wholeness there. As He offers His healing grace to us, may He not say any more, "but you would not have it."

Blessings,
Pastor O