compass....ion

Love seems so inexplicable, yet we all think we know what that miracle is. Then there is love's sister, compassion. What is compassion? So often it is thought to be sympathy, pity, or some other cheap thing that is thought to resemble compassion.

Think of the etymology of this word alone. Take the ending, "passion," which means suffering or barely containable emotion. With the beginning "com" which means with, together, jointly. So literally this word means suffering with someone, not merely to help someone or do something for someone.

Sitting with someone in pain, mourning with those who mourn, walking with someone just to understand who they are.

The gravity of this epic love....

This sort of love changes everyone involved. One cannot be compassionate or show compassion without being inalterably changed. And the one who accepts is changed when they are touched by this love.

Words escape me when I think of this word. I see a face with eyes filled with tenderness intently looking at the beheld, fingers reaching through darkness, arms catching the fallen, a guide-the compass-leading us home.

This is how our Christ looks at us, even in the most despicable sin and darkest night of the soul.

Compassion necessitated my existence and is the reason I continue to exist. I believe this is true of all of God's beloved.

Brennan Manning describes that compassion is not something of milk, it is meat for mature believers. It takes a great deal of courage, a willingness to risk, and a great deal of imagination. Indiscriminate compassion is what we are called to. A rose cannot withhold its beauty nor can a tree withhold its shade from certain people, not even the man coming with an ax to chop it down.

"What makes the Kingdom come is heartfelt compassion. It is the way that the lordship of Jesus over your life takes. It is a way of tenderness that knows no frontiers, no labels, no penalizing..... You'll never be more like Christ, never, than when you're choked with compassion over the tenderness of others. Compassion is the axis of the Christian moral revolution, it is the sign by which you're going to be known as a follower of Jesus. My prayer for you is that you will be graced with the courage, the wisdom, the maturity, the willingness to risk, the imagination, and the compassion to set free the song that now sleeps in the wounded flesh of a brother or a sister" -Manning