Leadership Thought: The 'Move' That Every Christian Should Make

Dear Friends,

Compassion, someone once wrote is “Your hurt in my heart.” It has been described another way by the well-known writer Frederick Buechner who said, “Compassion is that sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it's like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never be any joy and peace for me until there is joy and peace for you as well.”

Jesus was the Master of Compassion. Wherever He went, He had a way of feeling the hurts of the people He met, but it never stopped with just feeling for them. He did something with His feelings. Many of us can be sympathetic and say, “I am sorry,” but compassion “feels and whispers I will help.” Many have been the times I have felt sympathy, but unlike Jesus, I didn’t always  translate that sympathy into compassion, and I am the lesser because of it.

Repeatedly in Matthew’s Gospel, we read of Jesus seeing, feeling, and responding to needs. Again, and again we read that “Jesus was “moved” with compassion.” (9:36; 14:14; 15:32; 22:34). This is the “move” that every Christian should make. The Greek word for compassion means to “suffer with,” which implied that Jesus cared so much it physically affected Him. It’s as if he almost retched, because He was so deeply concerned. 

Dale Galloway, a Presbyterian pastor, shares the following story in his book Rebuild Your Life. “The phone rang in a high society Boston home. On the other end of the line was a son who had just returned from Viet Nam and was calling from California. His folks were the cocktail-circuit, party drinking kind, wife swapping, gambling, and all the other things that go with it. The boy said to his mother, ‘I just called to tell you that I wanted to bring home a buddy with me.’ His mother said, ‘Sure, bring him along for a few days.’ ‘But, mother, there is something you need to know about this boy. One leg is gone, one arm’s gone, one eye's gone, and his face is quite disfigured. Is it all right if I bring him home?’ His mother said, ‘Bring him home for a few days.’ The son said, ‘You didn’t’ understand me, mother. I want to bring him home to live with us.’ The mother began to make all kinds of excuses about embarrassment and what people would think…….and the phone clicked.

A few hours later the police called from California to Boston. The mother picked up the phone again. The police sergeant at the other end said, ‘We just found a boy with one arm, one leg, one eye and a mangled face, who has just killed himself with a shot in the head. The identification papers on the body say he is your son.’” Enough said!

As we walk through life this day, let us be on the lookout for those in search of a little compassion, a little empathy, a little understanding, and don't forget you don't always have to express it with words, "for tears speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues."

Yours in Faith and friendship,
Tom

P.S. Sympathy sees and says, “ I’m sorry.” Compassion feels, and whispers “I will help.”