A Devotion from C.H. Spurgeon

As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. 
-Psalm 103:13

In the former part of this psalm the psalmist sang of God’s deeds of love, his gifts, his benefits, and his acts of kindness, but here he goes deeper into the divine motive and finds sweeter incentives to devout gratitude. There is consolation in the fact that the heart of God is toward his people. He takes a warm interest in our welfare and has a feeling toward us of kindly, gentle affection—of such intensity that one of the highest forms of earthly love is here used to set forth the tender mercy of our God toward us.

It is an axiom in theology that God has no griefs—that he is “without parts or passions.” But I inwardly demur to such statements. They seem inconsistent with the tone and tenor of Scripture, for he appears to take pleasure in his people and to be “angry” with their ill-manners. Surely, metaphors that are inspired must have a meaning that is instructive. If the Father’s “heart yearns,” if our Lord and Savior is “filled with compassion,” and if the Holy Spirit is grieved, there must be something analogous to emotion in the attributes of the Most High.

At least he appears to sympathize with us, so that “in all their distress he too was distressed,” and he pities us as a father has compassion on his children. “That is speaking in a human way,” says somebody. True, and it is exactly the way I do speak. In no other way do I know how to speak, and until I learn to speak after the manner of angels you must pardon me and also the incapacity of my hearers to understand any other than human language.

Pity sympathizes with its objects, makes itself one with them. I believe in a God who can feel. As to Baal and the gods of the heathen, they may be passionless and without emotion or without anything that is akin to feeling. Not so do I find Jehovah to be described.

Believe it then, dear friends, with all your hearts, that God has kindly feelings toward those who fear him, such as a father has toward his children. This is a truth of which I feel jealous, and I do not wish to see it toned down.