Because I work at home, I spend a great deal of time with our dog, a two-year-old Pembroke Welsh corgi named Abby. Most days, Abby is an ideal companion in the office — she amuses herself gnawing on rawhide bones or her favorite toys, or she lies around in that state of half-sleep only dogs can muster. Every so often, she announces (first with an insistent whine, followed by a sharp bark if I don’t respond right away) that she needs her water bowl refilled, or that she needs to go out to the backyard to relieve herself.

Once in a while, Abby will come to me whining, even though her water bowl is full and she has only recently been to the backyard. “What do you want?” I ask, perfectly cognizant that the dog neither understands nor speaks English. Sometimes I eventually figure out what the problem is — she’s lost her bone under the sofa, or there are birds on the porch she would like to go chase. At other times, I exhaust all the obvious possibilities, and still have no idea what she wants. In these cases, Abby will eventually walk away and flop down on the floor in a huff, as if to say, “Why doesn’t he understand me?”

I’m thankful that my Lord never has to look down at me in puzzlement and ask, “What is it you want?” During His earthly ministry, Jesus demonstrated a faultless insight into the minds of men: “But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man” (John 2:24-25). On more than one occasion, He showed His keen ability to perceive even others’ innermost thoughts (Matthew 9:4; Mark 2:8; John 1:47).

More than this, Jesus is in a unique position to empathize with us. The prophets foretold of Him, “Surely He has borne our grief and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). And He followed through on this mission perfectly: “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

Jesus knows what we need because He has lived as we live — “walked a mile in our shoes,” as the old Native American proverb suggests. He has been hungry, thirsty, exhausted, in pain, in grief, in torment both physical and emotional. Therefore we never need fear that He will fail to comprehend our needs, or to address them according to His divine will.

This characteristic of Jesus reminds us that He is the living Word of God (John 1:1). That Word is embodied in the inspired Scriptures that Christ, through the Holy Spirit, moved godly men to write. When we look into that Word, we discover a marvelous reality: that it, too, understands us intimately and totally: “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). The apostle Paul, anticipating the day the written Word would be complete, wrote, “When that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away...For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known” (1 Corinthians 13:10, 12).

I will probably never really understand my dog. (Nor, for that matter, will she ever really understand me.) But we can rejoice in the comforting truth that we serve a Christ who knows and understands everything there is to know about us — every weakness, every shortcoming, every need — and loves us anyway.