I was walking to work in my neighborhood when I saw a young teenager sitting on a house stoop with his arms folded over his knees and his head in his arms. I noted as I walked that something wasn’t right. My heart started doing cartwheels. Everything in me wanted to stop and ask him if he was ok but I told my heart no.
I went to work (granted I was probably only gone thirty minutes because my work didn’t end up needing me), came back and he was in the same position. The opportunity to do something was still there! But my New York fear of man crept over me and instead of stopping this time, I tried to bury the feeling and kept walking.
I thought and thought about this incident as it bothered me. How many times does my compassion prompt me to do something but I get scared because it’s awkward or it’s messy? For years I was overwhelmed by the amount of times I felt the need to stop and I thought, “that can’t be God.” Well meaning Christians even helped me justify my lack of responsibility by saying, “You can’t stop for everyone” or “you need to be prompted by the Holy Spirit.”
Yet what does being prompted by the Holy Spirit even look like? I’ve been meditating on what perfect union with Christ looks like and it occurred to me that when you become one with someone their desires are suddenly your desires. You want what they want.
The Bible does not say that a dove descended on Jesus and told him to heal the sick. No, it says: “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” (Matthew 14:14).
It occurred to me that if I saw a child without it’s mother and in distress I wouldn’t even think before stopping to say something. Why was this older child no different? The startling amount of dysfunctional family homes means a large percentage of the population are in fact in distress without a mother to turn to. The world is full of orphans.
James states, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphansand widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27).
We are supposed to follow our compassion and we are supposed to look after the ones that are in distress. It’s no surprise to me that James 5:11 points out, “the Lord is full of compassion and mercy.” It’s who he is! Therefore it is who we are called to be.
I encourage you to do a word search on compassion in the Bible.
One of the verses that stuck out to me after thinking about orphans and how this young man was like an orphan was this: “When he [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Mat 9:36).
Paul explains what I have been thinking about well when he says, “Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (Phil 2:1-4)
As I’m writing I’m weeping. Weeping for this generation of motherless and fatherless children—sheep without a shepherd. I’m weeping because I am acting like one of them, too scared to rise up in love and defend them. Yet I know it’s never too late to try.
