He Walked In Our Shoes
Before I was widowed I would look at some widows and evaluate how they grieved. Maybe one cried all the time in public and another forever talked about her loss.
While feeling sympathetic, I also made judgments about issues unknown to me.
Then my own husband was killed. I was thirty-four years old with two young daughters. It was a shocking reality I cried every day and many nights for months. But I seldom cried in public.
One Sunday morning as I was walking into church, a woman came up to me and grabbed me by the shoulders. “You must grieve!” she shouted as she shook me with an angry force.
I had no time to respond as she walked off in a huff. As I steadied myself I went on into the sanctuary and sat down, still shaking from the encounter. What in the world made her so angry at me? I wondered.
Several weeks later a friend of that woman’s told me that my lack of public crying had some people thinking that I wasn’t grieving. Some people even wondered if I felt bad at all.
I thought of all the tears I’d shed and was astounded that anyone could think I didn’t grieve. But the people who were judging me were doing the same thing I had done myself before being widowed.
There is a saying that warns us not to judge others until we have walked a mile in their shoes.
In fact, some of the greatest comfort I received in those early days of widowhood came from women who had been widowed themselves. They could identify with me. They understood, firsthand, how I felt.
Over the years I have been asked to meet with widows for that same reason: they want to talk to someone who has been in the same place they are. We share a pain and therefore, a deep understanding.
Jesus, the very incarnation of God, shares that same identification with all of us.
The difference between his temptation and our own is that he is without sin.
He doesn’t look at our weaknesses the way I used to look at grieving people. He understands and sympathizes.
He comes alongside us and gives us an example of how to be tempted but not sin: feel the pain of life that can tempt us to sin in order to find relief, but choose obedience and turn from the temptation.
Father, we thank you that you sent us a Sympathizer in the Person of Jesus.