Monday, October 20, 2014

Compassion: Let it flow

In the contemporary Christian worship song Mighty to Save, there is a line: “Everyone 
needs compassion.”
This is true.
I need compassion. You need compassion. And not just the way we usually mean it.
It’s not just that we need to receive compassion, but we need to release compassion.
It is a need – not just an item on a to-do list, in our amateurish quests for self-improvement.
But an actual, hardwired need, because we were designed for that. We were designed to overflow with
everything that God is, most specifically His grace.
It’s His grace that we call out for, when we don’t know what else to say or do.
It’s His grace that we call out for, when we don’t know what else to call out for.
We call out in pain, or loneliness, or weariness, or fear – any number of things.
These are moments of necessity. It’s these times, when we're pushed beyond our own rediscovered
limits, that our human ability to recognize that ‘this is where I stop, and this is where God begins’ is really
activated.
But, just as important, are the moments in which we release compassion for someone else.
These are moments when compassion is like a dammed-up river, that now can flow through you. And all
that was dry and dusty and littered gets washed. Renewed. Restored.
And prepared. Because you are prepared for the next time someone does show compassion to you. 
You are prepared for the next time God is speaking one-on-one to you, and you recognize God’s 
mercy in your  life, flowing through your circumstances and your very existence. The riverbed has now 
been prepared.
The way has been made.
So let’s release compassion, not because we ought to, or we should.
But because we simply have to.
We simply have to.