Let’s Talk: How Compassion Creates Fluidity with God
Where patience gets tested
Our relationships directly test our patience, especially the ones we don't choose to be a part of: parent and child, employer and employee, in-laws, for example. The level of patience we have is directly correlated to the amount of love and compassion we carry. Our ability to show mercy, especially when it seems unearned, exposes our capacity to love.
What I learned from the children
I learned this while working with children with learning disabilities or diagnosed with autism. I noticed significant changes in their responses when I led with compassion versus sternness. Consistency and structure are required for growth, but a process lacking compassion will reap rigidity. The child may even display more inconvenient behaviors, which delays progression. When I coupled routine with compassion and joy, the children felt the difference and took instruction more easily.
Compassion in action
Compassion is a profound emotion, and it births forward movement. This reminds me of the ministry of Jesus, who rarely served the people around him without the prompting of compassion.
In Greek, this level of compassion is splagchnizomai, often transliterated "splanchna." It isn't typical compassion. It reaches the deepest level, one that couldn't be ignored and whose expression required physical action. Scripture gives us many examples:
Jesus, moved with compassion, miraculously feeds the 5,000 (Matthew 14:14).
Jesus, moved with compassion, heals the leper (Mark 1:40-42).
Jesus heals two blind men (Matthew 20:30-34).
Jesus removes an evil spirit from a boy (Mark 9:22-24).
Jesus' posture and capacity for compassion allowed the love of God to be felt by those he directed it toward. His fluidity with compassion created an ease for the Spirit of God to flow. Compassion is an attribute of God, and that's how we are even able to experience an infinite and perfect God as finite and broken vessels. The more we increase in compassion, the more of God we can carry and display.
What if we chose the same?
What if we chose to embrace the level of compassion Jesus exemplified and allowed God's life-giving Spirit to flow freely in our lives? How would our relationships evolve? How could we see more of the demonstration of the Spirit of God in our lives instead of only reading about biblical experiences?
"...that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:17-19
Let’s head into this week with this prayer:
Father, energize me to practice compassion with others. Increase my capacity to love and carry other people’s burdens as Christ did and keep me in flow with what You are doing in and through my life. Amen.
Scriptures Referenced
Matthew 14:14
Mark 1:40-42
Matthew 20:30-34
Mark 9:22-24
Ephesians 3:17-19
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