Friday September 16, 2022
JOHN 16:20
“You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy.”
We find these words in the midst of Jesus’ “messages of comfort.” They show us how Jesus both would and could comfort His people.
In the first place they show us how Jesus sympathizes with His friends.
What the disciples were to pass through during the hours immediately ahead of them was, comparatively speaking, not a great deal. It was in fact very little in comparison with that which was before Jesus. We might therefore have thought that Jesus would not have paid much attention to the lesser things which the disciples were dreading so much.
But Jesus entered into the very depths of their sorrow and anxiety as though He Himself had nothing with which to contend. The most important thing to Him that night was not what He Himself was about to suffer. It was the disciples of whom He was thinking and for whose welfare He was concerned.
Hear this, you who are a disciple of Jesus and who, at this very moment, perhaps, are in sorrow and distress, a dread of the future filling your soul. While others make merry boisterously and with shouts of laughter, you are weighed down with bitter sorrow. They do not understand you in your sorrow. Even if they did understand, there would be few who would take the time or would be willing to sympathize with you and enter into the real cause of your suffering.
But Jesus takes the necessary time.
Your distress is His distress. Notice that the disciples did not ask Him for comfort. That night they understood very little of what awaited them. Jesus, however, thought of their distress even before they themselves thought of going to Him with it. Such a friend is Jesus.
You fear oftentimes that your sorrow is of such a minor nature that Jesus is not concerned about it. But none of your sufferings are of minor importance to Him. He has purchased you with His own life-blood.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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