He Knows Our Sorrows

"I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you."
John 14:18

  

Blessed Jesus! How Your presence
  sanctifies trial,

takes loneliness from the chamber of sickness,
and the sting from the chamber of death!

     

Bright and Morning Star! precious at all times,
You are never so precious as in "the dark and
cloudy day!"

   

The bitterness of sorrow is well worth enduring,
to have Your promised consolations. How well
qualified, Man of Sorrows, to be my Comforter!
How well fitted to dry my tears, You who shed
so many Yourself! What are . . .

    
my tears,
my sorrows,
my crosses,
my losses,

     
compared with Yours, who shed first Your tears,
and then Your blood for me!

   

Mine are all deserved, and infinitely more than
deserved. How different, O Spotless Lamb of God,
are those pangs which rent Your guiltless bosom!

How sweet those comforts You have promised to the
comfortless, when I think of them as flowing from . . .

an Almighty Fellow Sufferer;
a Brother born for adversity;
the Friend that sticks closer than any brother;

one who can say, with all the refined sympathies of a
holy exalted human nature, "I know your sorrows!"

My soul! calm your griefs! There is not a sorrow
you can experience, but Jesus, in the treasury of
grace, has an exact corresponding solace: "In the
multitude of the sorrows I have in my heart, Your
comforts delight my soul!"

Excerpt from (John MacDuff, "The Faithful Promiser")