The Compassion of Christ When Life Gets Hard

Ellen Krause:
Welcome back to the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. I’m Ellen, your host. Today, we are learning to see Jesus the way the Gospels reveal Him—not as a distant observer of our pain, but as a Savior who comes close to us with compassion, gentleness, and restoring power.

Ellen Krause:
I’m joined today by Sherri Hughes-Gragg, a writer and Bible teacher who has emerged from years of study, trials, and ministry with a deep and radiant understanding of the compassion of Jesus—one that isn’t only theoretical, but lived, proven, and fiercely comforting. If you are hungry for a clear picture of the character of Jesus, you’re in the right place.

Ellen Krause:
Sherri’s insights will give you a deeper understanding of a God who loves us and isn’t afraid to come close. Sherri, welcome to the Coffee and Bible Time podcast.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
I am so honored to be here. Thank you for having me.

Ellen Krause:
Well, it’s such a delight, and you, my friend, are such a gifted writer who really helps people engage with Scripture by examining the context. Why don’t you do the same by helping us enter into your story? Tell us a little bit about your life and how you came to a place of wanting to write about the compassion of Christ.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
I was a preacher’s kid. I grew up in a very conservative denomination, and there was a lot that was wonderful about that. I know my way around the Bible, you know, and I’m so grateful for that foundation of Scripture in my life. I really believe that the teachers I sat under were well-intentioned.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
They wanted me to do well and to honor God with my life. The problem for me was that, as a child, I somehow missed the part about God’s grace. I began to wonder if He was at all pleased with me. I was afraid of God and tried to keep Him at a distance because there were so many ways to fall short.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
It felt like there was such severity on the other side of that. And so I wrestled with this for much of my life until I discovered studying Scripture through the Middle Eastern cultural lens in which it was written when I was in my forties. I’m a full-time writer. I’m a mother of five children; they’re between the ages of 22 and 30.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
We’re an adoptive family. Today is our gotcha day for my daughters, so it’s a very joyful day. So, yeah—that’s me.

Ellen Krause:
Well, thank you for setting the stage with your life story and how you have boldly accepted the role God has given you to help us understand Jesus’ compassion. You describe His compassion as something that actively moves toward human suffering. How is that different from the way many people see God responding to our pain?

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
You know, I think many of us want to know and wonder, does Jesus care when we’re hurt, when we’re afraid, and when we’re suffering? And we see that question in Scripture. When Jesus was on the Sea of Galilee with His disciples and a storm popped up, Jesus was sleeping right through it. When they woke Him up, they asked, “Teacher, don’t You care if we drown?”

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
We see people ask that same question in the wake of natural disasters: Where is God in this? I think that’s something we all want to know. And I believe there is an abundance of evidence in Scripture that He does care and that He draws near to us in compassion. That has been very real in my own life as well.

Ellen Krause:
Absolutely. You’ve said that compassion—not perfection or performance—lies at the center of spiritual growth. Can you share a moment with us when that truth became real for you?

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
Sure. I think a lot about when I began attending an Anglican church a little over ten years ago. One of the things I appreciated about that space was the joint prayer of confession. We bring our sin before God, and we’re given time to confess silently. But together we say, “We have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved You with our whole hearts. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.”

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
Here’s the thing—right after that, the priest speaks the Comfortable Words over us, which are Scriptures that reassure us of Jesus’ compassion for us in our sin and His forgiveness of us. That pairing really allowed me to be more honest with God about my shortcomings, because before that time, I just wanted to avoid the subject. I was afraid of the repercussions.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
That’s quite dangerous—to not be honest with God about the ways we’re failing. As I learned to be honest and then immediately receive that forgiveness and reassurance, it allowed me to more fully love God with my whole heart and more fully love my neighbor as myself.

Ellen Krause:
That is such a critical point. Unless we can accept God’s grace for what it truly is, we can get caught in a cycle of not knowing how we could possibly measure up. Was there anything else that helped bring you to that realization?

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
I think studying Scripture through the Middle Eastern cultural lens helped immensely. I began to realize that we don’t get every detail when we read the biblical accounts. There are big gaps, and it’s a human instinct to fill those gaps with what we know.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
The problem is that when we fill them in with a culture and history that are 2,000 years removed from when Scripture was written, we sometimes misinterpret things. When I really began to study that cultural lens, I realized that Jesus was far more compassionate than I had ever imagined. That helped me rest in His love and compassion for me. I will say that because I had so much conditioning growing up, this is something I will likely need to be aware of for the rest of my life—and continue to seek God’s love, forgiveness, and compassion for the rest of my life.

Ellen Krause:
Absolutely. You know, it’s interesting—the timing of this—because I’ve been going through an old R.C. Sproul study on God’s grace and how he lays out the importance of this truth: if you don’t understand the full weight of your sin, you can’t know how big God’s grace is. Holding those two together is so powerful and such a key part of our transformation process. Sherri, out of all the gospel encounters you highlight in your devotional, is there one story of Jesus’ compassion that continues to move you on a personal level?

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
You know, I think it’s so powerful to spend time just sitting in these stories from Scripture. When we see Jesus encountering these men and women along the way—many of them at the darkest moments of their lives—we really see His compassion for them. And depending on where I am, different stories speak to me. Sometimes it’s the leper who’s longing for healing and feeling rejected and afraid.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the first story I ever wrote in the book, which I titled The Untouchable One. It’s the story of the woman with the issue of blood. I could really relate to suffering a physical ailment and feeling the isolation that goes along with it—and perhaps even the judgment from the community that questions whether God allowed this into your life because of some sin. That’s where she was.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
But when Jesus encountered her, He didn’t reject her. He didn’t judge her or push her away. He tenderly called her daughter. And that’s what I need to know when I’m hurting and lost and afraid—that Jesus calls me daughter.

Ellen Krause:
That’s so beautiful. You can just see Him looking her in the eyes and capturing that moment. Was there a moment in your research, Sherri, that surprised you—something that revealed a layer of Jesus’ tenderness that you hadn’t seen before?

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
Yes, there were many moments like that. I get very excited about the research portion of this and what I’m learning. The one that really blows me away, though, is the teaching around when Jesus cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
I grew up hearing that preached on a lot, and the interpretation I always heard was that God, in His holiness, couldn’t bear the sight of the sins of the world laid on Jesus, so He turned away from Him. Even as a small child, I found that really troubling. I knew Jesus was much better than I was, and if God could turn away from Jesus, what did that mean for me?

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
I also found it troubling because Jesus was suffering. That was God’s Son, suffering in agony on the cross. I wondered what that meant about God if He could turn away. But when I was in Israel studying under Dr. James Martin, he taught on this passage, and what I learned changed everything.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
When Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” He was using a common teaching method of His time called a remez, which means “a hint.” A remez tells the listener to think back to something they have already learned.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
This phrase comes from Psalm 22. It’s the first verse, and the entire psalm is deeply prophetic about the crucifixion. It almost reads like a first-person account. The psalmist begins by saying, “My God, You’ve abandoned me. Why have You turned away?” But a few verses later, the psalmist realizes he was wrong about God.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
In verse 24, it actually says, “You have not despised me. You have not turned Your face away from me.” So as Jesus was on the cross, with very little breath, surrounded by friends and followers who were devastated and felt like everything had been wiped away, He couldn’t say much. But what He could do was point them back to Psalm 22—to God’s faithfulness.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
In essence, He was saying, “I know this looks bad right now. I know it looks like God has walked out of the room, but He has never left Me, and He never will.”

Ellen Krause:
That’s so beautiful, and it must have been incredibly impactful to be in Israel when you received that teaching.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
Yes.

Ellen Krause:
Sherri, you’ve walked through both breast cancer and divorce—both profound seasons of suffering. How have those personal valleys shaped the way you understand Christ’s compassion?

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
I was actually diagnosed with cancer the day after I signed divorce papers. I really don’t have the ability to describe what that moment was like—being alone in my room, opening my patient portal, and seeing the word carcinoma everywhere. It felt like an atomic bomb dropped into my life and obliterated everything.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
I was so hurt. And I know that might sound strange, but I was hurt by God. When He knew how completely broken I already was, I couldn’t understand why He would allow that season of suffering. I remember praying, “God, I trusted You. I’ve been telling other people that You’re a God of compassion. What is happening? I don’t understand.”

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
What I came to realize is that bad things just happen down here—things worse than we could ever imagine—because we live in a broken world. That’s what it means to live in a creation that has been redeemed but is still waiting for its restoration. But God draws very near to us in compassion when the ground is swept out from under our feet.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
God showed up for me. Even when I couldn’t read Scripture, pray, or go to church because I was devastated and in shock, He showed up through the love of my community and my family. I can say with confidence that He never left me.

Ellen Krause:
And truly, those people who ministered to you were the hands and feet of Jesus.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
Yes, they were.

Ellen Krause:
It’s beautiful how God showed Himself to you that way. You write that Jesus not only heals our wounds, but restores our hope. Tell us a little about how you experienced that restoration after your suffering—and how readers can open their hearts to it as well.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
I want to begin by saying that I love N.T. Wright’s description of where God is in moments of extreme suffering. He uses the example of natural disasters, like Haiti, where people were buried beneath the rubble. He says the answer to “Where is God?” is this: God is in the rubble.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
I found that God came very near to me in the rubble of my life. It’s been three and a half years since all of that, and He has restored me. At the time, I couldn’t imagine anything beyond the ashes of my life—it felt absolute. But He has brought more love, laughter, and joy than I ever could have imagined.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
One of the sweetest things is that He’s opened doors for my work, allowing me to share with others who are suffering some of the treasures He gave me in the darkness. I’m so grateful for that.

Ellen Krause:
I love how God allows us to take what we’ve learned through pain and suffering and use it to help someone else. It’s mind-blowing, but it helps so many people. If you could summarize the heart of Jesus in a sentence or two, after all your study and personal journey, what would you say?

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
I would say that Jesus loves us, and He moves toward us in compassion. We really cannot overestimate His love, His mercy, and His grace in our lives.

Ellen Krause:
Yes—that’s something you really have to let soak in because it has such healing power. You speak and write about the gentleness of Jesus with such depth. Why do you think His kindness is the message our world is most hungry for right now?

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
The world is very angry right now. We’re deeply divided, and a lot of people are suffering. Sometimes I step back and ask myself, “What happened?” And honestly, I think the internet did a number on us. It brought many good things, but something insidious also happened. People began to feel free to be callously cruel to one another from a distance, and it spiraled.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
What I would ask is this: What do we really believe about Jesus? Do we believe He is callous and cruel? And do we believe it’s okay for us to treat each other that way? I think many people are weary of the anger, violence, and division.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
Jesus is not callous and cruel—He is kind and compassionate. There is abundant evidence of that in Scripture. And He calls us to take the compassion, love, and mercy we’ve received and extend it to others, even to those we deeply disagree with. I believe there is a better way.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
The church should be the conduit through which that love enters the world. We should be showing people what it looks like to honor Jesus in how we love Him and how we love one another.

Ellen Krause:
Yes, absolutely. We were actually talking about this in our small group last night—how it starts within our own families and neighborhoods. Imagine what the world would look like if more of us lived that out in the sphere of influence God has given us.

Ellen Krause:
If you’re listening, I want to encourage you to start today. Let’s live it out in our homes and neighborhoods. Sherri, as a mother of five—which is amazing—you have such a full life. Tell us a little about how Jesus meets you in the pressures of daily life.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
I think a lot of moms can relate to the heavy sense of responsibility we feel as we love and guide these lives God has entrusted to us. I take that responsibility seriously. I take my work seriously and my relationships seriously.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
But even on my best days, I’m human, and I make mistakes. Christ’s compassion meets me there—helping me offer myself more grace, resist the urge to beat myself up, ask for forgiveness, and receive forgiveness from Him and from my children.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
From there, I find the courage to get up the next day and give it my best again. That’s what it means to be human. I used to tell my kids growing up, “Human beings say things they don’t mean, they break things—sometimes they even drive through garage doors.” This is what it means to be human.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
We rest in the truth of God’s love and compassion, receive His forgiveness, get back up, and try again.

Ellen Krause:
Yes, absolutely. That kind of transparency teaches our kids so much. If we need to say we’re sorry, we say we’re sorry. I love how you’ve lived that out in your family. As we close, what might it look like for listeners to carry the compassion of Christ into their own lives?

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
I would encourage people—especially those in a season of suffering—to open themselves to the possibility of restoration. You may not be able to believe it fully yet, but you can open the door to the possibility.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
Invite Jesus into that moment, wherever you are. And if you’re able, spend time in the gospel accounts where Jesus meets people in their darkest moments with tenderness and compassion. Seeing that gives us hope that He will meet us there too.

Ellen Krause:
Yes, He truly does. Sherri, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and your devotional, The Compassionate Christ?

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
The Compassionate Christ is available wherever books are sold. You can find me at SherriGragg.net, and I’m also on Facebook and Instagram, where I do short teaching videos. I’d love for people to join me there.

Ellen Krause:
Wonderful. We’ll include those links in the show notes. Before we let you go, we always ask a few fun questions. What is your go-to Bible, and what translation do you use?

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
It depends on what I’m doing. For devotional reading, I still love the NIV—I fell in love with it in my twenties. For research and study, I prefer the NASB.

Ellen Krause:
Great choices. Do you have any favorite Bible journaling supplies?

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
I’m an avid journaler and have been for years. I use the same journal for everything. For a long time, it was a specific unlined Moleskine. Now I use one from a German company—I think it’s Leuchtturm1917. I love that it’s unlined because it gives me freedom to write or draw.

Ellen Krause:
Love that. Lastly, what’s your favorite app or website for Bible study tools?

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
I like Logos as an app, and I also use Bible Gateway a lot.

Ellen Krause:
Both are excellent. I especially love that Logos now offers a monthly subscription. Sherri, thank you so much for sharing your heart and encouraging everyone listening today.

Sherri Hughes-Gragg:
Thank you, Ellen. I appreciate the opportunity to remind people once again that God loves them and has compassion for them.

Ellen Krause:
He certainly does. If this episode stirred something in you, I encourage you to sit with it, talk to Jesus about it, and let His compassion meet you right where you are. Until next time, may you know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. See you next time on the Coffee and Bible Time podcast.