Be compassionate

Luke 6 : 36 - 38
Be compassionate as your heavenly Father is compassionate

I was never a very compassionate person when I was young and full of myself. It was easy then to think that I could accomplish everything I set out to do. There was never a sense of the frailty of life, the fact that life includes being vulnerable and weak. There was the thought that those who were vulnerable and weak were just the lazy ones. There was no deep compassion for those who might not make it, yet not due to any fault of their own.

Now, thankfully I am not only older but wiser. I think it has to do with facing my own weaknesses and pain. And not only that - but in the midst of those experiences, the gracious love and mercy of God himself. We can only be compassionate when we have experienced what it means from God himself, who took on human flesh to live like us. That grace experience changes the way we approach the weak ones: it is the difference between just helping others and being truly compassionate.

I read somewhere that being compassionate "is a sharing of pain or failure or brokenness or fear or anxiety. It sometimes means to mourn with those who mourn, to be lonely with those who are lonely, to be weak with those who are weak....the compassionate are not in the liifeboat throwing life preserves to those drowning in the ocean; they are in the ocean themselves, helping the others into the boat or to the safety of the shore."