“He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces.”

Isaiah 53:3

This passage in Isaiah is describing what Jesus would be like 600 years after it was written. It says here that Jesus was “a man of sorrows.” What an uncommon way to describe our Savior! Yet a careful thought into what he is like by this name stirs the soul to deep contemplation.

One of the things we often forget in seeing the suffering in our world is that not only does God see it all, God feels it all. We take a glimpse into the window of suffering and quickly accuse God but fail to realize that God is in entirely in the house. He knows more suffering that we know; He knows more about where injustice is than we know; He sees more murder than we’ve ever seen. And not only in our lifetime, but through every single generation of human existence. Through every miscarriage in history, through every child soldier abducted, through every casulty in war, through every divorce, through every rape, through every thing we call pain, God has been there. And God has seen it all.

He’s the man of sorrows because He’s grieved over the miseries of humanity longer and greater than any of us could understand. And if we could feel for a day the sorrow in God’s heart, I assure you we would perish in our frailty. Our hearts are too small to take hold of the things that God has seen. And so Jesus is the man of sorrows.

Can we then bring our concerns and struggles to God believing that He sees and understands?

You bet. More than anyone else in the world.