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I
want to share with you a wonderful e-mail I received this week. It’s
called an explanation of God, and supposedly was written by a third
grader:
One
of God’s main jobs is making people. He makes them to replace the ones
that die, so there will be enough people to take care of things on earth.
He doesn’t make grownups, just babies. I think because they are smaller
and easier to make. That way be doesn’t have to take up his valuable
time teaching them to talk and walk. He can just leave that to mothers and
fathers.
God’s
second most important job is listening to prayers. An awful lot of this
goes on, since some people, like preachers and things, pray at times
besides bedtime. God doesn’t have time to listen to the radio or TV
because of this. Because he hears everything, there must be a terrible lot
of noise in his ears, unless he thought of a way to turn it off.
God
sees everything
My
very favorite children’s book is “The Velveteen Rabbit.” A dear
friend of mine gave me a copy of this book, not when I was a child, but
when I graduated from college. “The Velveteen Rabbit” is the story of
a little boy’s nursery. The nursery was full of toy animals, and one day
a new toy rabbit came to live in the nursery. The rabbit wanted to know
the secret of becoming real. He asked the skin horse, who was so old his
brown coat was rubbing off, what was the secret to becoming real. The old
horse replied, “Real isn’t how you’re made, rabbit. It’s a thing
that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, then
you become real.”
The
rabbit asked, “Does it happen bit by bit, or all at once, like being
wound up?” “It doesn’t happen all at once,” the skin horse said.
“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen
often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be
carefully kept. Generally by the time you are real, most of your hair has
been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints
and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you
are real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
One
of the great needs of the world today is compassion. This is a word that
has been cheapened in the modern usage, like many words. When we hear the
word compassion many people think “pity,” and that misses the target.
Pity is weak and kind of worthless. Pity is looking down on your neighbor
without much desire to help. Pity leads to scenes like the man who prayed
in the temple, “Lord, I thank you that I’m not like that sinner over
there.” The world has plenty of pity, it doesn’t need any more. What
it needs is a healthy dose of compassion.
George
Buttrick in The Interpreter’s Bible, one of my primary reference books
for sermon writing, wrote that compassion is a very strong word, one that
means “the pain of love.”
God looked down
from heaven and saw the mess that humans had made of their lives, and was
moved with compassion, the pain of love, so he sent his son Jesus into the
world. Jesus was born into the world and could see our suffering, and
what’s more, could touch us and sense our pain. And he was filled with
compassion, the pain of love. In the Gospel of Matthew we read that when
Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were
harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” It wasn’t pity
he felt for these people, he didn’t feel sorry for them, he felt the
pain of love.
The
Gospel of Luke is my personal favorite, because it shows Jesus having
compassion in so many different circumstances. Over and over again, Jesus
stops what he is doing and is touched by the suffering of the most common,
every day people he visited. Do you believe that Jesus is touched with the
problems that we have today? When we lose a loved one? When we have
sickness and sorrow and disease in our racked bodies? I want to tell you,
when we get to heaven we’re going to find that his heart was broken
every time, every moment we spent in pain in this life.
That’s
the Jesus I see in the story of the widow mourning her dead son, a Jesus
moved by compassion for someone in the deepest pain. Luke doesn’t tell
us why Jesus chose this widow, this funeral to raise someone from the
dead. Maybe in this one instance he was able to simply respond to the
anguish he saw in the world all around him. He could not respond to all
that anguish, for it would take him away from his teaching ministry. Maybe
in this one case, however, he could respond without having to make a
theological statement for all the world to see.
Compassion
is action. Compassion does something about the misery that it sees. It is
not a feeling, even though feelings are involved. It is not a sense of
pity, or pain, or sorrow, even though all of those emotions are involved.
To say “I feel sorry for that person” or “I am distressed by that
situation” isn’t enough. To suffer indigestion over the plight of the
world’s hungry isn’t compassion. To cry ourselves to sleep over the
misfortune of another isn’t compassion. Compassion acts—even when
confronted by a widow and the funeral of her only son.
When
we have compassion for other people, that’s when we are closest to God.
That’s when God truly lives within us, bringing an influx of love. When
we feel compassion for another human, another pilgrim, we are being
prompted by this inner spirit to act. This is one way, a very direct way,
of experiencing God in our lives. We become compassionate, loving and
caring towards others only when we do the good works the Lord teaches us
because to do them we have to quit being selfish and materialistic to have
time and energy to do for others.
When
we do good works, then the Lord fill us with love and compassion for
others. For example, he forgives us our sin when we forgive others their
sins against us.
2—We
act in compassion because others will be moved. Notable Christians must be
noticeably Christian. As I’ve said many times, we are in a great culture
war, in this country and in the world. People are watching us to see if
our deeds match our words, and so often they laugh, because they don’t
match. We say one thing and live another. Outsiders sneer and say our
religion is a sham. The one thing they have no answer for is compassion.
When we imitate Christ by extending compassion to another, that is what
impresses the unbeliever. That’s what makes us a true community.
Babe
Ruth is synonymous with great American heroes, but he stayed a little too
long in the game, until after his skills had badly eroded. During one of
his last games, Babe’s errors in the outfield allowed five runs to
score. As he walked back to the dugout after the third out, the boos of
the home fans rained down on his ears. It was a humiliating moment for the
man who had been the number one idol in America for nearly 20 years. Just
then a boy jumped over the railing and ran onto the field.
With
tears streaming down his face, he threw his arms around the Babe’s legs,
and Ruth didn’t hesitate for a second. He took the boy’s hand and
lifted him up. He hugged him, then set him down on his feet, patting him
gently on the head. The noise from the stands came to an abrupt end.
Suddenly there was no more booing. In fact, a hush fell over the whole
ball park. The Babe and the boy had melted the hearts of the crowd.
3—We
act in compassion because others have been compassionate toward us. Jack
Casey was an emergency worker on an ambulance rescue squad. When Jack was
a child, he had to have oral surgery. Five teeth were to be pulled under
general anesthesia, and he was scared. What he remembered most, though,
was an operating room nurse who understood the boy’s fear. She said,
“Don’t worry, I’ll be right here beside you, no matter what
happens.” When Jack woke up after the surgery, she was true to her word,
standing right beside him.
Nearly
20 years later, Jack’s ambulance was called to the scene of a highway
accident. A truck had overturned, the driver was pinned in the cab, and
power tools were needed to get him out. However, gasoline was dripping on
the driver’s clothes, and one spark from the tools could have spelled
disaster. The driver was terrified, crying out that he was afraid to die.
So Jack crawled into the cab beside him, and said, “Look, don’t worry,
I’m right here with you, I’m not going anywhere. And Jack was true to
his word. He stayed with the man until he was safely removed from the
wreckage.
Later
the truck driver told Jack, “You were an idiot. One spark from the tools
and we both would have burned up.” But Jack told him he just couldn’t
leave him. Once, long ago, he had been treated with compassion, so that
now he could show compassion to someone else. Grace received enabled grace
bestowed.
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