Romans 12:15 encourages us to “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”
We live in a very self-centered world. I’m consumed by my problems, or engaged entirely with my happiness. Good or bad, my thoughts are on me.
As Christians, we need to be different. We need to have our thoughts focused on other people, just as Jesus focused his thought on us. He became one of us, cared for us, rejoiced with us at the wedding at Cana, wept with us at the tomb of Lazarus … he empathized with us. And so we need to empathize with each other.
The key to empathizing with someone is to walk in their shoes. Use your God-given imagination to imagine what it would be like to be experiencing what they are experiencing. Ask yourself: if I was in that situation, What would I feel? What would I need? What would I want someone to say to me or do for me? What would I be thinking? Would my faith be upset at this?
We are one body, and empathy is one of the key ways we will show that to a world who is watching us.
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