15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Rom. 12:15,16
It's pretty easy to mourn with those who mourn. A bad diagnosis, a death in the family, a layoff at work, a divorce, the 1st Baptist prayer request list goes on and on (although a divorce may be an unspoken request) We wouldn't want any of that to happen to us or our loved ones, so we can easily mourn at best and sympathize or empathize at least. Sending cards, praying for, setting up food chains for or even just texting prayer hand emojis or phone calls saying, "I'm praying for you" or "how can I help?", are legitimate gestures to those mourning. The only fake morning that we might struggle with are when we dislike or are envious of a person and we somewhat gloat and think to ourselves, "I warned them that might happen and they wouldn't listen" or "they got what they deserve" or some kind of vindication of you or your way of managing life is shown to be superior.
Those are rare cases where we can't mourn and indicate people that we need to learn to love and need to work better at living in harmony with. Paul uses "one another" which means that most of these people that we have hidden dislike for are in the church. As I invent circumstances I would not mourn over in my head, I would concur that most are believers that I have friction with. Unbelievers don't really bother me that much because they are behaving according to their center and don't know better. Also, I know that they will be judged someday and I wouldn't want to be in their shoes. I know I need to do better with believers. Lord help me!
The other command is to rejoice with those who rejoice. This can be tougher because of our love of self. Someone gets an award. Yay! (Why didn't I get recognized?) Someone's child got engaged or pregnant! Yay! (why is mine struggling with singleness or infertility?) Someone got a huge promotion. Yay! (why did I get passed over again?) Paul says "don't be conceited" or don't think you are better than or more important than someone else. You aren't! Remember, you are just a cog in a wheel that is rolling the Kingdom of God bus. A fellow worker for the kingdom. If one of your fellow cogs gets polished, we should just be happy for them. As fellow servants, it's not like they became a master, they are just a servant who got a new cloak or extra dessert. We have a wrong view of the body which leads to jealousy. We have a wrong view of self which leads to a lack of true rejoicing.
May God work on our hearts to not think of ourselves more highly than we ought and begin to forgive people who have hurt our inflated ego so that we can truly mourn and rejoice with one another.
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