C o m p a s s i o n
was a term I made up in my head as one of those Christian-ese terms to show love to one another with sensitivity of one’s emotional state. You know, like, how Christ had sympathy on us. Sympathy… But was I trying to relate compassion with… self-righteous pity?
T o d a y
I had the privilege of sitting in on a message from one of the co-founders of Love146, an end-it movement on child trafficking, at a nearby church. Speaking from Matthew 14, Rob (co-founder) explained the heart of Jesus when he heard the news of the gruesome murder of his dear cousin, John the Baptist. Scripture says as soon as Jesus heard the inhumane news, he drew away from the crowd to find privacy in a deserted area. The multitudes of people that heard the news fled their cities to follow Him. This is the opening scene of Jesus feeding the 5,000. The famous number of 5,000 we read about only accounted for the men, but Scripture also states there were woman and children among them, kicking up a big cloud of dust as they entered the presence of Jesus.
I m a g i n e
the Superbowl arena full of rowdy, desperate, starving, excluded, hopeless people, many types of people we know, or maybe even you and I, full of fear, rage, and insecurity desperate for hope. In a time of grief and heartbreak, Jesus looks at the great stadium of distressed faces, and had compassion on them… he went to them and healed them in the midst of the mess.
I learned a few new definitions of compassion:
Compassion, as a Greek noun, means
inward parts, the gut, the thing that makes you vomit, violently ill not just heartbreak or pity.
or,
Racham,
related to the Hebrew word for “womb,” creates a visual of labor that brings pain but produces new life.
C o m p a s s i o n b e g i n s
in the midst of the gut-wrenching pain. It challenges and breaks us to cry out with the broken, be powerless alongside the powerless, be fully immersed with the current human condition. We pray for God to break our hearts for what breaks His, but what we are asking for is a deep compassion to seize our innermost being, regardless of our own current messy condition, and move towards the helpless, the needy, the forgotten. The true reality is we mostly retreat and numb ourselves with the nearby comforting distractions.
I know I am a victim of this. Having compassion is laboring and overall taxing, but we are appointed for such a time as this to fully embrace the throbbing of the internal torment and allow the painful birth of new visions and dreams to come to life.
O n t h e W o r l d R a c e ,
I know there will be many faces I’ll face. Many of them needy, many broken, many sick, many hopeless but with my weak human heart, I trust God to fill my heart with His Spirit of compassion. Break me and disturb my numbness, to love like You love, Holy Spirit.
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