A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured. (Mark 1:40-42 Bold Mine)
Recently I began questioning God, “Why am I going on this trip?” Do get me wrong, the thought of traveling around the world for a year, doing
”
the good work he has gotten ready for us to do” (Ephesian 2:10 The Message)
is a really exciting. But I wonder sometimes, where do I fit in? What is the purpose of me being there?
Last week as I was working at a local hardware store that I worked in before I left Georgia, I was telling one of the customers about what I had been doing and where I was headed next. He began asking me why I felt as though I need to go away to help people. “Don’t you know, there are people here who need help?” I was a bit taken aback by this question.
I want to be honest, sometimes I don’t care about other people’s suffering. The title DOES NOT describe me. In all of AIM’s planning they have us take different personality and leadership assesments, while discussing the outcomes of my assessments, I was told that my impathy for others scored pretty low. Actually, really low.
In thinking about all of this, I felt like God was taking me to the verse above. I have probably read it a 100 times, but never paid much attention to what it said. Last school year, our school director at New Horizon’s made this the theme for the school year.
Jesus felt such compassion for the leper that He reached out his hand and touched him. Of course, Jesus could have just told him, “Be healed” But he touched him. He was willing to become “unclean” by Jewish law because he had compassion for him.
As I’ve been asking God about why I’m going, I believe that He wants to began to build a heart of compassion, but to do that, I need to see real need.
