Compassion

On Sunday my middle daughter fell off her scooter whilst travelling at a fast speed downhill. This resulted in a lot of blood as she had put her tooth through her top lip. The owners of the house we were outside of, came out and helped us, giving us all that we needed. It was such a relief to have such lovely help. I carried on to church with 2 of our children whilst my wife Rebekah went back home with the other 2. She had only gone past a couple of houses when she heard a man talked in a loud enough voice to make sure Rebekah heard complaining in foul language about the noise and making derogatory remarks about our parenting before shutting his door. When I heard about this I felt disgusted, angry, offended. It was the opposite of compassion. I felt like going round and showing him how disfigured my daughters face was. Instead I decided to pray for him! It was my best way of dealing with my feelings.

Henri Nouwen writes that we must never "underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it."