Sighs That Speak Of Sympathy And Power
He looked up to heaven … with a deep sigh.
Mark 7:34
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Deeply moved by the needs all around him, Jesus responded in the best way possible—not with fine-sounding words, but with a sigh of compassion followed by meaningful action.
A man who could neither hear nor speak, people who had followed Jesus without eating for three days—each person experienced Jesus’ unspoken, yet unmistakable, love.
Jesus sighed. Yet it was no mere sigh of resignation or frustration, as F. B. Meyer makes clear.
WALK WITH F. B. MEYER
“In this passage, along with Mark 8:12, Mark twice calls attention to the Lord’s sighs. A sigh is one of the most touching and significant tokens of excessive grief. When our natures are too disturbed to remember to take a normal breath and must compensate for this omission by one deep-drawn breath, we sigh deeply in our spirit.
“ ‘He looked up to heaven … with a deep sigh.’ As the deaf-mute stood before him—a n image of all the closed hearts around him, of all the inarticulate unexpressed desires, of all the sin and sorrow of mankind—Jesus’ sensitive heart responded with a deep-drawn sigh.
“But there was simultaneously a heavenward look which mingled infinite hope in it. If the sigh spoke of his tender sympathy, the look declared his close union with God, by virtue of which he was competent to meet the direst need.
“Jesus, in doing good, would look to heaven and sigh; but his sighs were followed by the touch and word of power. Let us not be content with a sigh of sympathy and regret.”
WALK CLOSER TO GOD
You, like Jesus, can couple a heartfelt sigh with effective action, looking to God for the power to correct that which made you sigh in the first place.
There’s a sighing, dying world waiting for someone like you to take compassionate action. What will be your answer: A sigh or a shrug? Or a sigh and service?
