Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Romans 12:15
Paul wrote this to the church in Rome during a time when there was much instability and uncertainty. The Roman Empire was troubling and terrifying. Of course, there were still joys and things worth celebrating, but life under the thumb of the Empire could be unsettling to say the least. Everyone was always experiencing one end of it or another.
Paul said Christians should be masters in empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Paul says empathy is not an action, but a command.
“Rejoice with those who rejoice" means to share in and celebrate the joys and successes of others, demonstrating empathy, compassion, and unity. It urges us to honestly feel the joy of those believers who are experiencing God’s blessing in their lives as if we ourselves were experiencing blessings. We rejoice for them even when it’s not happening for us. Not just faking it on the outside but truly feeling joy for them from our hearts.
“Weep with those who weep" means to share in and empathize, truly feeling the sorrow of others, offering comfort and support during their times of grief, rather than simply acknowledging it. It’s far more than a passing consideration.
This past week, Patty and I were able to celebrate with a friend of ours who was inaugurated as the president of Ohio Christian University, our alma mater. So many other friends were also there to celebrate with him and feel pride for him and his family. It was a wonderful time, rejoicing together.
Right after the ceremony, just before the celebratory luncheon, we learned that our brother-in-law’s brother suddenly died of a heart attack while on a mission trip to Costa Rica. He was a friend of ours, as well as many others, because we all are so connected through our Ohio Christian University experiences. He was a pastor, husband, and father, only 58 years old. Two of his family members got a phone call about his passing while we were all there together.
Wow! What a swing of emotions! Big celebration and then deep sorrow. Rejoicing and then weeping. And then rejoicing and weeping together.
This is a picture of life. There are moments of great celebration and moments of great pain and sadness. They can seem so unrelated and at odds with each other.
Jesus makes these seemingly unrelated experiences actually bearable, even to the extent that we can help each other. We can live in this broken world, experience the difference, and make a difference. Kay Warren, tremendous Jesus follower and author, expresses so well what is possible with Him:
“I’ve had hard times but so has everybody else. I mean if I were able to sit down with every person reading this interview and we were able to just sit down over a cup of tea or coffee, we could share our lives and each of us could talk about the painful things, the sad things, the heartbreaking moments. I’ve had those as well. Some happened in my past as a child, some were health concerns, some have been relational, we all have stuff – we all have painful things.
“I compare that to a set of parallel train tracks, and on one side are painful things that break our hearts. But, what’s running right alongside that train track of pain is the train track of joy, of good things – of happiness, beauty, and loveliness, where things go right. And those tracks run right next to each other through all of our lives, and we sometimes try to outsmart the sorrow track and think that if we can just think positive thoughts or good thoughts, we won’t ever have to deal with sorrow, and that just isn’t true.
“Sorrow comes to all of us. So, it’s not a matter of somehow, by positive thinking, we can experience joy, no – it’s accepting both the sorrow and the joy together and choosing then to see it from God’s point of view, and that’s a challenge.”
And then one day there is a place where there will be no more weeping and only rejoicing – heaven. Praise God.