Anxiety – I still feel this sometimes …… often! Surprised that at my age I still can be so thrown by interactions with people who ‘scare’ me. “Come on Susan – get over it!!”
But I don’t seem to be able to obey myself!!
So it got me to thinking – and to having more compassion towards others who are similarly ‘stuck’ with certain issues in their lives and find it difficult to let go, or to move on, or to change etc. Counselling uses to use the word empathy as an important quality to bring when helping others. And now in counselling we also talk of compassion and kindness.
Compassion is a bigger word than empathy. A more encompassing word. Compassion is an ancient concept deriving from the Latin word “compati,” which means “suffer with.”
Kindness is the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Kindness is also an action/doing word. It is love in action.
The Bible is full of messages about God’s compassion and kindness and the call for us to likewise be kind and compassionate people
God himself…………….
Isaiah 30
Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!
Many in the Bible showed God’s kindness
Ruth is one. Ruth loved her mother-in-law, Naomi, and had compassion for her. Naomi’s husband and sons had died. In an act of selfless compassion and empathy, Ruth travelled with Naomi back to Bethlehem and settled there with her.
God gives us his comfort so that we can comfort others………………
2 Corinthians 1:3 – 7Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.
And so for us…………
Ephesians 4:32“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
So how are we doing with feeling compassion for others? Thinking compassionate thoughts?
How are we going with showing kindness? Doing deeds of mercy?
Susan