With Us

Len Kinzel, Chaplain

As I continue to learn the original languages of the Bible, I grow more intrigued by all the different ways people have tried to capture its words. I recently came across a book that says there are more than 400 translations or versions of it just in English. 400! One of the more obscure ones caught my attention with the way it has a well-known line about Jesus, saying He “can feel with us when we are weak. He has been tested in every way, just as we are.” (Hebrews 4:15, Worldwide English).

My thoughts jumped from there to a scene just before Jesus was arrested and crucified. Matthew tells us Jesus was with some of His closest friends when He “began to be grieved and deeply distressed.” Then Jesus admitted, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow, to the point of death.” If you turn the page, you see him crying out to God, wondering where He had gone (Matthew 26:37-38; 27:46). I find something profoundly comforting in that, especially if I hold it beside those four words: Jesus “can feel with us.” With us! Another Bible version says, “We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality.” Jesus knew grief. He knew fear and anguish. He knew what it is like to desperately want someone close by—and what it is like when our closest friends fell asleep on us.

I think it’s a shame we only use one of God’s best names a couple of weeks in December:

Immanuel — God with us. It can be one of the hardest truths to remember year-round, but it is one of the most essential. Here at Sierra View, one of my favorite things is seeing all the ways God wrapsHimself up in all kinds of people, so He can continue to carry out the promise of His presence, and all the ways people find Him with them when no one is around.

Grace is a photograph by Eric Enstrom. It depicts an elderly man (named Charles Wilden) with hands folded, saying a prayer over a table with a simple meal.

A former radio journalist, Len Kinzel spent 28 years in South America, including 18 years as senior pastor of an international church in Ecuador, before God transplanted him and Beth in California. Len holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in pastoral ministry and is an incurable reader and lifelong student. He is especially interested in learning more about God’s design for the human brain and where faith, aging, loss, and ordinary life meet.