Be Compassionate
She’s old and dressed poorly. You cross paths with her in a dollar store where you’re picking up some throw-away items for a family gathering. She catches your eye because every time she puts something in her basket, she recounts the money in her hand. You notice that the items she’s picking up are for a little child, probably for a grandchild’s birthday. She has almost nothing, but she’s investing it in a little person who’s special to her. How do you feel? What do you do?
He’s young and in trouble. You cross paths with him at a walk-in clinic where you’ve gone to renew a prescription. He catches your eye because he looks sick and disheveled. You try not to notice that he’s trying to make eye contact. You take one last glance and he’s got you. He takes a couple of steps toward you and asks if you could drive him to his mother’s house because he’s sick and has no place to go. How do you feel? What do you do?
Whatever mix of emotions you might experience, compassion is likely to be among them. If it is strong enough, it might lead you to reach out to these people in some way. Empathy allows you to identify with their pain, compassion provokes you to do something about it. Compassion is the one emotion most likely to prompt us to perform selfless acts in our everyday world.
The most compassionate people I’ve known have been Christians who take being like Jesus seriously. They truly suffer with others and do what they can to alleviate their pain just as Jesus did. Here are two important ways that Jesus demonstrated compassion:
Jesus knew the significance of touch. In the gospels we find many examples of Jesus touching others and allowing them to touch Him. Especially outstanding was the fact that he touched lepers as He healed them (See Mark 1:40-45). He touched children to bless them (See Mark 10:13). Those who were too bashful to engage with Him directly, He allowed to touch his clothing, and they were healed (See Mark 6:56).
Jesus knew the importance of relationships. Like all of us, Jesus had people with whom He interacted every day, others He would see occasionally and still others with whom He crossed paths only once in His three years of ministry. He maintained friendships. He had relationships with people. He drew people to Himself, if even only over a meal. Of all of the pain we suffer as humans, rejection ranks among the highest, if not the highest. Jesus responded warmly and personally to even the most unlikely candidates for His attention. This stands out because the religious leaders of Jesus’ day used exclusion as their most effective weapon to control the people. Jesus irritated them no end by intentionally including those they had excluded, the physically imperfect, the morally defiled, the socially ostracized.
As we seek to be like Jesus, we will demonstrate the same compassion He did. There will be some to whom we, very naturally, respond positively. Others, well, not so much. Yet when we look at the life of Jesus, there are none He excluded, unless they intentionally exclude themselves. Jesus welcomed all comers and compassionately responded to their need, for food, for healing, for forgiveness, for inclusion. We often talk about things in terms of being “the least we could do.” Expressing compassion is inevitably “the most we can do.”
