It was humanly impossible to hear this scream and not feel pain. This was not play-acting. There was something wrong, and someone was in trouble.
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And Moved With Compassion…
When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them and healed their sick. (Matthew 14:14)
Empathy is not just a feeling; it’s a feeling that compels us to do something.
Numerous times in the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus, it says He was moved with compassion. But that compassion was never an end in itself. Jesus did not just sit there being moved. His compassion drove Him to do something about it, whether it was to heal someone, or sit down and teach a crowd of people, or in a couple of instances it drove Him to feed them because He put Himself in their shoes and knew they’d be hungry. “I feel compassion for the people,” He once told his disciples, “because they have remained with Me now three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way” (Matthew 15:32). So given that, He fed them. He didn’t just teach them; He wasn’t just concerned about their souls. He got inside their shoes and realized they were hungry, so He did what He could do… He performed a miracle and fed them.
Empathy is very practical. It gets us inside people. It spurs us on to grace. Empathy is not for contemplation; it is for action. If it doesn’t produce any change in us, it is just a useless exercise. We would be better off not knowing.
We created a video a while back that contained footage of random people walking by, or sitting on a park bench or pushing a stroller, and with each one we imagined in a sentence what might be going through the mind of that person: someone just found out the test was positive; someone’s son is serving in a dangerous environment and she hasn’t heard from him; a couple is breaking up; someone just lost her job; a dad just found out his wife is pregnant… these are things that empathy would tell you, and knowing the truth would draw you closer, either to weep with or rejoice with someone, and ultimately to do something to help acknowledge the feeling or alleviate the pain. That’s where grace goes — outward to those around us. But you have to know. You can’t just guess. You have to know, and once you know, you can do something about it.
But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. (Luke 15:20)
Walking In Your Shoes Means Losing Mine
Empathy requires that we step outside ourselves. Empathy requires a level of selflessness that may be a hard reach for some. Once again, Jesus would be our example, who gave up His right to be God in order to be a human being. Jesus was in our shoes the whole time because He shed His God-shoes when He was born in Bethlehem (Philippians 2:5-8).
Standing In Someone Else’s Paws
Now back to John on the couch with the Chihuahuas. Those of you who missed the events of last week, Marti and I have had the inside of our house painted. After a week of chaos, I moved Marti to a motel 45 minutes away while I stayed in the house, sleeping on the couch with the dogs and the mess.
Silent Screams
“In 1971, at the age of 19, I discovered I was pregnant. Total panic set in. This problem had to be taken care of, I told myself. It had to go away. My first and only thought was of my parents and their reaction. They must never find out. I knew that they would disown me.”
Down Days
So Marti has got me sleeping on the couch. But it’s not what you think. This is not a marital problem, it’s a marital necessity.
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Exactly 250 Years Ago…
On Saturday, the American colonies declared themselves free and independent states, but were they free and independent? No. Not until five years later at the last battle of the revolution in Yorktown, Pennsylvania, did they achieve that independence, which was made official two years later in the Treaty of Paris.
A Different Kind of Kingdom; a Different Kind of King
But the fruit of the Spirit is …
love,
joy,
peace,
patience,
kindness,
goodness,
faithfulness,
gentleness and
self-control.
Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)
It was the beginning of the end for Jesus. He was at the peak of His popularity. Crowds were building wherever He went. Many had been touched and healed by Jesus. The crippled were walking, the blind could see, the deaf could hear, and lepers had been pronounced clean by temple priests. You couldn’t beat that kind of publicity. Everything was building toward the Passover celebration.
Are You in a Silo or in the Field?
When you follow the desires if your sinful nature, your lives will produce these evil results … [and among a grocery list of evil things is this:] the feeling that everyone is wrong except those in your own little group. (Galatians 5:19-20)
This one jumped out at me. I could not avoid it or get it out of my mind. “The feeling that everyone is wrong except those in your own little group.” This is obviously not a direct translation, but it is found in two popular paraphrases of the New Testament that gives it credibility as to the meaning of the original. Other translations use words like “factions” and “party-spirit.” Either way, it is an evil that is rampant today where the power of party lines is so great. The tendency to demonize all who disagree with you and your camp is a powerful rendering of self-righteousness, although we would not call it that. We would quite simply be right and everyone else, wrong. It’s an easy way to manage a chaotic world, except it is not true. Not one of us is free of sin.
How We Will Leave A Mark In These Times
These are trying times. They are stressful times. They are times of uncertainty. There is nothing new about that. We’ve all been through times like this, but there is something different this time — something sinister.
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