If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see how even divine omnipotence might by the force of its own love be swayed down to the world? ...how it might, because it could know its own creatures only by compassion, put on mortal flesh, become a man, and walk among us, assume our nature and our fate, suffer our faults and our death?

You may think that Much-Afraid was altogether too much given to shedding tears, but remember that she had Sorrow for a companion and teacher. There is this to be added, that her tears were all in secret, for no one but her enemies knew about this strange journey on which she had set out. The heart knoweth its own sorrow and there are times when, like David, it is comforting to think that our tears are put in a bottle and not one of them forgotten by the one who leads us in paths of sorrow.

Instead, it is the reality that the God-forsaken one experienced in an eminent way because no one can even approximately experience the abandonment by God as horribly as the Son, who shares the same essence with the Father for all eternity.

My friends have forgotten me, My dependents and maidservants respond to me as a stranger. Summon my servant but he does not respond¦ My odor is repulsive to my wife, I am loathsome to my children.

And I will sing how sad Proserpina Unto a grave and gloomy Lord was wed, And lure the silver-breasted Helena Back from the lotus meadows of the dead, So shalt thou see that awful loveliness For which two mighty Hosts met fearfully in war's abyss! And

That's what attracts us to serious paintings, I think: that shortfall, which we might call "personality", or maybe even "pain".

When He comes back, He will be revealed as the heir of all things. Once He was rejected by tiny Israel; When He returns, He will be accepted by every single nation. Once He was a lowly Savior, acquainted with grief; Then He will be the mighty God, anointed with the oil of gladness.

There was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.

oy where did my ear go?

Christmas means Jesus came down and got involved in suffering. He hears your cries.

The fact that Jesus came to earth where he suffered and died does not remove pain from our lives. But it does show that God did not sit idly by and watch us suffer in isolation. He became one of us. Thus, in Jesus, God gives us an up-close and personal look at his response to human suffering. All our questions about God and suffering should, in fact, be filtered through what we know about Jesus.

Jesus, who did not sin, also felt pain.