May 10
Companions of the Way (Morning)Jesus wept.
He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.
JOB'S rebellion came from the thought that God, as a sovereign, is far off, and that, for His pleasure, His creature suffers. Our own theory comes to the mourner with the assurance, "Your suffering, just as it is in you, is God's suffering. No chasm divides you from God. He is not remote from you even in His eternity. He is here. His eternity means merely the completeness of His experience. But that experience is inclusive. Your sorrow is one of the included facts." I do not say, "God sympathises with you from without, would spare you if He could, pities you with helpless external pity merely as a father pities his children." I say: "God here sorrows, not with but in your sorrow. Your grief is identically His grief, and what you know as your loss, God knows as His loss just in and through the very moment when you grieve."
JOSIAH ROYCE