Del Calls to Del

Compassion, the Finished Work of Christ, and a Way Home to the Father

There is a Persian word I have always loved: del (دل).

We usually translate it as “heart,” but it carries far more. Del is the inward place where love, sorrow, longing, and hope are held—the deepest part of us, the place another person can touch without ever laying a hand on us.

There is also a Persian saying:

Del be del rāh dāre.
دل به دل راه داره

There is a path from one heart to another. One heart somehow finds its way to another heart. So when I read the words,

“Deep calls to deep…” Psalm 42:7

I hear something familiar in them.

Del calls to del.

The heart of God finding its way to the human heart.

Over the years, Scripture has begun to feel this way to me. One passage opens another. A verse I have known for a long time suddenly sounds different because another passage has come alongside it. I find myself hearing one conversation moving through the whole story.

That happened to me with Psalm 22.

For most of my Christian life, I assumed that when Jesus cried,

“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Matthew 27:46

the Father had turned His face away.

I connected it with the Hebrew expression hester panim, the hiding of God’s face.

Then I kept reading. Later in the same psalm it says,

“He has not hidden His face from him,
but when he cried to Him, He heard.” Psalm 22:24

That changed the way I heard the cry from the cross.

The psalm itself says that God had not hidden His face and that the suffering one had been heard. I began to think again about the priestly blessing:

“The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up His countenance upon you
and give you peace.” Numbers 6:24–26

The blessing is expressed through the face of God turned toward His people.

Then I thought about the way Jesus spoke of the cross.

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” John 12:23

The Father answered from heaven,

“I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” John 12:28

Jesus also said,

“For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life.” John 10:17

I was not trying to force these passages into a system. I was simply allowing them to speak to one another.

Somewhere in that process, the cross began to look different to me. I no longer saw the Father turning away from the Son. I began to see the heart of God revealed through the Son’s self-giving love.

The cross became, for me, the place where divine compassion entered human suffering completely.

The Gospels often tell us that Jesus was moved with compassion. The Greek word is splagchnizomai, from splanchna, the inward parts of the body. It describes something felt deeply and physically, before it has even been put into words.

The Hebrew word rachamim carries a similar depth. It is related to rechem, the womb. Compassion in this sense is not detached sympathy. It is the feeling of another person’s suffering within oneself.

The Persian word del belongs in that same conversation. When something comes from the del, it comes from the innermost self. It is not a social gesture or a polite response. It is something true moving from one person to another.

This is what I see in Jesus.

God did not remain outside our humanity. In Christ, He knew hunger, weariness, grief, rejection, loneliness, and fear from within a human life. Jesus wept. He was troubled. He was moved by the suffering of the people in front of Him.

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” John 1:14

The incarnation means that human suffering is not foreign to God.

Compassion, then, is a sacred exchange. It happens when one person speaks from the depths and another person is willing to receive what is there.

Deep calls to deep.

This has also changed the way I come to the Father.

It means that no matter what I have done, I can come through Christ because of His finished work. I do not have to hide.

Hiding appears almost immediately in the biblical story.

After Adam ate from the tree, he said,

“I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” Genesis 3:10

Something had changed in the way Adam saw God and himself. He no longer felt safe enough to remain in the open.

Then came Cain. When his offering was not received as Abel’s was, his face fell. God came to him and asked,

“Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?” Genesis 4:6

I find that moment deeply moving. God gave Cain the opportunity to speak about what was happening inside him. Cain could have brought his disappointment into the relationship, but instead he turned away from the conversation. What he did not bring into the light eventually became violence.

I recognize something of myself in both stories. There are times when I want to hide because of shame, and other times when disappointment makes me withdraw. Beneath both is the fear that I have somehow failed to please the Father.

Jesus lived differently.

His whole life was lived in communion with the Father. At His baptism, before His public ministry had begun, the Father said,

“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Matthew 3:17

Jesus lived from that love.

Later He said,

“He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him.” John 8:29

His life was not an attempt to persuade the Father to love Him. He lived as the beloved Son and revealed that love to us.

At the cross, Jesus carried our estrangement into His own faithful relationship with the Father. Even in suffering, He entrusted Himself to Him.

“Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” Luke 23:46

And then He said,

“It is finished.” John 19:30

For me, those words mean that the way to the Father is open.

I do not come because I have finally made myself worthy. I come through Christ. His finished work is the reason I no longer have to remain hidden.

“Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Hebrews 4:16

That is the love I am learning to accept.

It is the love that makes honesty possible. I can bring the Father what is actually happening inside me rather than presenting a cleaned-up version of myself. I can speak from the del because Christ has already made the way.

The Father’s face is not something I have to earn.

In Christ, His face is already turned toward me.

This changes prayer for me. I am not trying to convince a distant God to care. I am opening my heart to the One who has already come near and who understands human sorrow from within our humanity.

When I speak from the deepest place in me, I am not speaking into emptiness.

My heart is meeting the heart of God.

And if this is how God receives us, then perhaps this is how the Church is meant to receive one another.

The Church should be a place where people do not have to hide. It should be a place where disappointment can be spoken before it hardens, where grief is allowed to take the time it needs, and where another person’s pain is not treated as something inconvenient or frightening.

Compassion does not always require an answer. Sometimes it means remaining present long enough for another person to discover that they have not been abandoned.

Perhaps this is what deep calling to deep looks like among us.

The heart of God reaches the human heart, and the human heart slowly learns that it is safe to answer.

Del calls to del.