Sympathy

I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none. Psalm 69:20

“Anything in life is bearable, if only you have somebody to bear it with you.” 

I don’t know who said that, but I think there’s a lot of truth in it. To be utterly alone in your time of trouble must be the most bitter, desolating experience imaginable. But if there is someone on hand to share it with you, it makes all the difference in the world.

If you read Psalm 69 from the start you can find out what the writer is going through and what has brought him to write these heart-breaking words. But the key word is sympathy, which literally means “suffering with” somebody, and for which he looked with hopeless eyes. 

To sympathise is to try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, so to speak, so that you can feel something of what they are feeling. Then, of course, you try to do something about it: you visit them, you sit with them, you ring them, you take any practical steps you can to make things better for them. If appropriate you pray not only for them (that, I hope, goes without saying) but also with them.

There are plenty of true stories of the difference which such sympathy can make. I have a friend whose circumstances had brought him to the point of despair. He was alone, and thinking about taking his own life. But he felt he must talk to somebody first, so he rang an old friend who lived some distance away. After a couple of minutes the friend, realising how bad the situation was, said, “Put the phone down - I’ll be with you within the hour.”

And so he was. When he arrived there was in fact very little he could actually do: certainly, there was no way he could solve all my friend’s problems. But never mind - the very fact that he had dropped everything he was doing, that he came at all and then stayed for a bit, changed the situation completely. My friend feels, looking back, that that practical demonstration of sympathy saved his life.

 

There are stories of people going through the horrors of torture chambers and concentration camps who are given the heart to keep going by some little display of sympathy. I read somewhere about a man thrown into a solitary confinement cell in some vile, horrible prison. He pretty much lost the will to live; death seemed preferable.

One day he heard a tapping sound on the wall from the next cell. Was someone trying to get in touch with him? He tapped back and waited. Sure enough, the tapping came again. Over the coming weeks he and this neighbour - whom he never met or learned the name of - worked out a system whereby they were even able to communicate in a simple way. There was something to live for! That tapping on the wall became for him the difference between despair and hope, even death and life.

As a minister I always feel humbled and even slightly embarrassed when someone who has been through a specially hard time says “Thank you so much for everything you did.” Because, really, I did virtually nothing - just called, just listened, just prayed. You could even say, in fact, that I was “only doing my job”. And yet...

In the “Message” version of the Bible the psalmist’s words are translated: “I looked in vain for one friendly face. Not one. I couldn’t find one shoulder to cry on.”

Is God calling you today to be that “one friendly face”, that “one shoulder to cry on”? It’s no exaggeration to say you could change somebody’s life for ever. Paul tells us (Romans 15) to “weep with those who weep”. Is it time to do just that?

Lord, I pray for those who have sunk into the depths of despair, especially those who feel all alone. Help me to do whatever I can, however small it may be, to show them the love of Jesus, and so to give them the great gift of hope. Amen.