Compassion – Agency to Blessed Healing

Compassion comes in steady,

Soothing the aching heart,

A kindness always ready,

Renewing hope, again, to start.

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Compassion is the miracle of God; the agency of blessing able to soothe the aching heart. It is ever ready in its kindness, opening doors to hope, and the courage to start, afresh. Compassion finds reason for a new hope; one that is miraculous (and unexplained) in the finding.

But compassion is not easy, for it relies on a solemn heart, motivated in purity, and dissuaded from a self-manufactured solution. No, compassion must come from elsewhere.

Compassion is both the gift of God and, therefore, inexplicable. She is inscrutable, and, like empathy, unknowable, and only always felt.

The Giving Of Compassion

Perhaps there are more people who wish to be compassionate than can be. Some may yearn to be compassionate but find they struggle. They may not have been compassionate with themselves. They may not have had opportunity to connect.

The genuine reaches of compassion are singed by the flames of suffering. It is when we experience our own suffering that we first notice the suffering of the world about us. This suffering is the bleak reality. But it lights up the juices of compassion and the liquid of grace steams, permeating into action.

The giving of compassion becomes the only way in such circumstances.

What is natural cannot be suppressed. To know compassion, and to give it, both, are gifts from God—to be owned and appreciated and respected. It’s a responsibility. Compassion has another role in harmonising any of the sinful pride we might experience for having been so gifted. This is not a gift we have given ourselves! It’s of God. All glory goes to him.

The Receiving Of Compassion

Is there anything better on this whole earth, when it is needed, than the receipt of compassion? Everyone needs compassion; even, and especially, those gifted to give their compassion. For, they may wonder why it is they give yet don’t receive.

Something wondrous happens when we receive somebody else’s compassion. We become energised with a certain unspeakable magnanimity for ourselves. Suddenly from within grows a hope and a belief in ourselves to get through.

This is the power of love. The kindness in compassion creates an indelible space through which God works mysteriously and therapeutically. It brings us to life.

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Compassion makes all the difference in the world to healing. In its silent way it eases open the barriers holding us to a depressed world, such that there may be faith again to explore an emerging hope. In compassion, God begins to work a miracle.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.