COMPASSION!

Compassion

 

COMPASSION – A rather unsettling idea for people in a hurry…

How does a person feel compassion when he/she is cruising above it all in the fast lane: Scurrying around, community meetings, theater’s and social events, so many things to do, weighty decisions to make. And these things take us away from the things of God and the church and our time in the Lord each day.

COMPASSION IS FOR PEOPLE WITH TIME ON THEIR HANDS!

Jesus however, had time for compassion. He felt people’s needs and was deeply moved by them. And ended up feeding the hungry hoards and lovingly healing society’s castoffs.

But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd  Matt 9:36

And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed.  Mark 1:41-42

But the disciples, like us, were rather annoyed by the heaving masses and the dirty lepers, who, today, are those frumpy, disheveled types with grubby beards, bratty kids, delinquent mortgage payments, dented cars and boisterous and verbally abusive spouses.

People surviving around the fringes of their vision or dream and out of sync with the rest of us. People with whom we have nothing in common.

Do we have tolerance for them? Possibly. Do we feel compassion for them? Hardly.

In fact, if we were really honest, we have no time for these people. These people clutter up our landscape. But, because of our affluence, our education… really, because of our PRIVILEDGED position in society, we are able to avoid and insulate ourselves from them.

And… If we care to admit it, the way we deal with them is to be polite, but NEVER get involved.

Could it be that the greatest plague today is not AIDS or inner city crime, or even the starving masses in some third world countries, but “our lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference towards one’s neighbor who lives at the roadside assaulted by exploitation, corruption, poverty and disease and sin?”

Calvary love leaves us no option but compassionate involvement:

Jesus loves them also, and we should try to show them compassion and point them to the cross. We are not to be partakers of their life styles, but our compassion should be to lead them to Jesus.

Jesus, while eating with the prostitutes and the city’s lowlife, instructed the censoring religious types:

Most of our time with people is not designed to lead them to Christ but simply to visit and eat and socialize with them. But because we are afraid of losing our acceptance with them, we don’t want to offend them, or we might lose our standing with the community and our friends, we just socialize rather than try to show them the way to Christ.

But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.  Matt 9:13