Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Romans 12:15
If you are going to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, you have to get close to other people. It is not possible to obey this command if you remain in your own private world.
The temptation is to remain aloof, to be detached from others, and to keep to yourself. Some of us would say, “Well, I’m a private person.” Remember, God calls you to be a loving person, and to do that you have to find ways to get close enough to other people to feel their pain and to share their joy.
Think about how God models this for us. God could have made the man and the woman and then left them to get on with life on their own. After all, they had each other. But right from the beginning of the Bible, you find something different. God comes down, takes a visible form, and walks with the man and the woman in the garden in the cool of the day.
God did not do this because he felt a need for the man and the woman in his life. God came down and walked with them in their world because God is love! Love does more than watch from a distance. Love comes and walks with others in the joys and the sorrows of their lives.
These appearances of God in a visible form point forward to that great outpouring of love in which God actually became a man in Jesus Christ. Christ came close to us, entered our joys, and shared in our pain.
Get close enough to some other people to share their joys and their sorrows. Ask yourself: With whom can I rejoice? With whom should I weep?
