I’ve been thinking about compassion.
I’m thinking about it because we live in a world filled with passion. We can summon passion for all sorts of ideas, causes, and groups. Over at Rich’s Ride yesterday I wrote: Passion might boil over into hatred and a demand for vengeance, or passion might lead to a decision to love and seek justice.
I wonder how often passion leads to compassion.
The bible records seven times when Jesus displayed compassion. In each case Jesus perceived a need in either an individual or a crowd. In each instance, He turned toward the need and addressed it.
Last time I talked about the difference between a feeling and a decision. I wonder if, in the midst of our passion, we can choose compassion.
Compassion is a conscious decision to be aware of the needs around me.
It’s a decision to turn toward those needs when I see them.
It’s a decision to do what I can, where I am, with what I have to alleviate those needs.
Choosing compassion means I don’t stand above the fray. I get involved in the messy stuff of what it means to be human. And often the most I can do is be there.
Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.
Henri Nouwen