Your future may be better than you think. By Ellen White

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When you are afflicted and discouraged, look up! A divine hand reaches out to you. The hand of the Infinite reaches down over the pinnacles of heaven to grasp your hand warmly and firmly. The mighty helper is near and helps the most erring, most sinful and most desperate. His great heart of love longs with deep and heartfelt compassion for those who are heedless and neglect their eternal salvation.

Individual care, love and compassion


Let us remember that Jesus knows and cares for each and every one of us as if there were no one else on earth. He sympathizes with our weaknesses. He knows the needs of each of His creatures, and the hidden, unspoken sorrows of every heart. When one of the littlest ones he died for is hurt, he sees it; for he is familiar with all that people misunderstand and misrepresent.

The Messiah knows from his own experience the weight of every human suffering, every human sorrow. He bears the burden of the yoke for every soul that submits under his yoke. He knows the sorrow we feel at the core of our being that we cannot express. If no human heart feels compassion for us, we need not think that we are without compassion. The Messiah knows, and he says: "Look at me and live!"

All the parental love that flowed from heart to heart from generation to generation, all the fountains of kindness that gushed up in human souls, are but a tiny trickle compared to the boundless ocean of God's infinite, inexhaustible love. No tongue can put them into words, no pen can describe them. Even if one studies this love forever, its length and breadth, depth and height can never be fully understood. For she moved God to give his Son to die for the world. Eternity itself can never fully reveal this love.

community in suffering

Everything takes the Messiah with it as it takes its weakest disciple. His compassion is so great that he cannot watch the suffering of his children with indifference. No sigh is breathed, no pain is felt, no sorrow penetrates the soul without touching the Father's heart.

Like a faithful physician, the Redeemer of the world has his finger on the pulse of the soul. He registers every beat, every throb. No emotion stirs the soul, no sorrow shadows it, no sin stains it, no thought or intention penetrates it that is not known to it.

The Messiah feels the pain of every sufferer. When evil thoughts lacerate the human body, Jesus feels the curse. When fever consumes the life-stream, he feels the torment.

talking to god

God bends down from his throne to hear the cry of the afflicted. To every sincere prayer he answers, "Here I am." A prayer rising from a broken and contrite heart is never unheard; it is like sweet music to our heavenly Father's ears; for he is waiting to bestow upon us the fullness of his blessings.

If a prayer is offered with a sincere heart and in faith, it will be answered in heaven. Grammatically incorrect, it can still come from the heart. So it ascends to the sanctuary where Jesus works. He will present it to the Father without a single clumsy, stammering word, gracefully and perfectly through the work of Messiah; for his righteousness refines and ennobles it and makes it acceptable before the Father.

Our best motives and efforts

If we want to follow God from the heart and make an effort in this sense, Jesus accepts this attitude and this effort as man's best service and compensates for the lack with his own divine work; for he is the source of every right impulse.

Through the work of the Savior, the Father looks upon us with loving compassion and gives us hope, speaking the language of forgiveness and love. For the Messiah was treated as we deserve so that we may be treated as He deserves. He was condemned for our sins in which he did not share, that we might be justified by his righteousness in which we did not share.

Our best interests at heart

God is not asking us to give up something that it is in our best interest to keep. In everything he does, he has the well-being of his children in mind. I wish everyone who hasn't chosen Jesus would realize that He has something much better to offer them than they can imagine! For the more we know God, the more intense will be our happiness, and the lips that are willing to speak, though impure, will be touched and cleansed with the living charcoal. They will be able to speak words that will burn their way into people's souls.

Oriental Watchman, 1. December 1909