Jesus is filled with compassion over your suffering, and he cares about your plight! Share that hope with someone you know who is suffering today by singing a hymn.
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada, with an old favorite gospel song that I sing often – sing it with me.
(Joni sings:)
I would love to tell you what I think of Jesus,
Since I found in Him a friend so strong and true
I would tell you how He changed my life completely,
He did something that no other friend could do,
No one ever cared for me like Jesus,
There’s no other friend so kind as He;
No one else could take the sin and darkness from me.
O, how much He cared for me.
I tell you, when I most often sing this song it is usually when I go to a hospital to visit a friend who’s sick. I sit at the bedside, and I ask them if I can sing, and then I just sing it a cappella. And it’s a great song to sing if that friend does not know the Lord. After all, like the song goes, I’m telling that friend what I think of Jesus – how he’s helped me and touched my life. And people can’t argue with that! Plus, it gets that person in the hospital bed thinking that there really is a God who cares about their plight, who’s filled with compassion over their need.
I also sing this song on the phone, usually when I’m asked to call someone who, oh, I don’t know, maybe has broken their neck or their back or had an attack of some sort. I will lean against the receiver, and I’ll ask if they mind if I sing a song, and then I will launch into this favorite. I think the words convey so much about the compassion of Christ toward those who hurt. Mark 1:41 comes to mind, where it describes the Lord, “Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.” Don’t you love that? Jesus was filled with compassion, because he saw the man’s distress; he saw the hurt; he saw the need, and Jesus just had to do something about it. He just could not not do something! Jesus could not bear that man’s misery any longer, so he reached out to what was a leper in Mark 1 and he made him whole.
That chapter is just a single illustration of the compassion of Christ. And if you look that word up in the dictionary, you’ll find that the word compassion means to be with – I mean really with – someone in their suffering. And the way you break down the word is, “com” means with and “passion” means the suffering of Christ – the passion of Christ. So when you minister to a hurting friend – someone sick, injured, discouraged – you are showing compassion. You are showing them that you want to be “with them” in their hardship. Best of all, you are showing them Jesus – the fact that he bore up under suffering so that he, in turn, could bear your friend up under his.
Psalm 86:15 describes our God perfectly; it says, “But you, O Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” So I’ll tell you what I think of Jesus and how I found in him a friend so strong, so true. To feel the Savior’s touch is to be encouraged and changed.
© Joni and Friends