Near the ticket counter was a young woman in a wheelchair, who was talking to a flight attendant. The attendant reassured her that she would be cared for throughout the flight. Then, the young woman made a remark that surprised me, “How kind of you to care for me without me having to pay extra.”
I thought, isn’t it strange that anyone would think about paying extra to receive needed care and attention. Have we reached a place in our society where we expect that people only care when they are paid to? Have compassion and a caring attitude become obsolete? Sadly I’m afraid so.
Caring is something that must be given freely, with no strings attached. My heart went out to that young woman as I remembered Christ’s example in Mark 1:41.
Do we have compassion for the suffering of others? How much compassion we have affects the fervency, the desire with which we yearn for Christ’s return, which will end this world’s suffering.
One way to learn compassion is to begin expressing it. I suspect that almost daily someone comes to us who needs help in facing a small hurt or a large crisis.
How can we honestly express compassion, empathy and pity? We need five important skills: (1) We need to listen; (2) We need to show we humbly understand; (3) we need to show love and patience; (4) we need to express openness, honesty and trust; and most of all (5) we need to give hope.
Listening. The key to good listening is first, stop talking. One reason we talk rather than listen is that we really do not want to hear about others’ problems. We have enough of our own, we think. But if we in tend to be sympathetic and compassionate, we must listen.
The Bible is bursting with the words of men and women who poured out their hearts before God. God is not embarrassed or put off by what His people say.
Showing understanding. Besides listening, we need to show that we have heard.
Reverse the roles and see what we look for when we seek help from someone else.
It is the nature of pain, whether emotional or physical. No one can fully understand the pain another person who hurts or feels alone. When we respond to a hurting person, we are communicating. “I want to understand your particular experience. I want to try to help you carry the burden.”
The person who cares is sincerely humble, not pretentious, willing to learn, reluctant to impinge on the other’s privacy and in no way inclined to look down on others from a holier than thou perspective.
It is no accident that Jesus, the most compassionate man who walked on the earth, was also the humblest.
Romans 12 is filled with practical instructions for caring, compassionate Christians. Take time to read it.
Love and patience. Compassionate, sensitive, giving love is of prime importance if effective compassion is to be generated. Such love is patient and kind. It originates with God and is one of the fruits of His Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).
Patience implies endurance, persistence, sticking with a person or situation even when no change seems to be taking place.
The compassionate person is a patient person who stays with the one in need, giving him or her time to grow, patiently meeting needs and expecting that healing will come in due time. Like love, real patience comes from God.
Openness, honesty and trust. In our society, we are trained to hide our feelings. We learn to stifle our emotions and sometimes we can’t express our feelings or describe them in words even when we want to.
All of us need friends, who are authentic (not phony), genuine, honest about their own struggle and needs, willing to speak the truth in love and people who, by their example, encourage others to be honest and open in return.
Think for a moment of people who have really helped you. It is likely that such people accepted you, believed in you and had confidence in your ability to grow and mature even when you had no confidence in yourself.
Hope. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to have compassion for someone if you couldn’t offer any hope? Hope involves a desire for something we want but do not yet have. When we hope, we yearn for something we cannot obtain by our own strength or resources, something that possibly will or will not come.
Hope bring comfort and mobilizes our energy and enables us to keep on going even in the midst of difficulties.
The compassionate person must exude hope.
More than any other person who has ever lived, Christ showed compassion (Luke 7:13; Matthew 4:23-24). He set the example for us.
We need to heed Paul’s words in I Peter 3:8. Let us truly have compassion for everyone.
