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Compassion Is a Decision

Blog 2020.09.29

In Sunday’s sermon, Pastor Derek used the Book of Obadiah to challenge us to have God’s heart of compassion for others.  But sometimes we may struggle to share His compassion, and we need to rely on His Spirit to strengthen our ability to love others in this way.  Here’s a true story of how God can shape our heart of compassion.

It was a scorcher of a July day when my family had decided to take a day trip to explore Boston’s Freedom Trail. We came into the city armed with bottles of water for us, and my husband had brought a stack of McDonald’s gift cards to hand out to the homeless.

We had parked under the Common and had hoofed our way up to the start of the Freedom Trail when I first saw him. Well, to be more precise, I smelled him before I saw him. He was an older man with a scruffy beard so big that it concealed his face. His crippled body was reclining on a motorized wheelchair. The motorized chair made me inclined to think that he was receiving some sort of government assistance. I quickly looked away and corralled my children past Park Street Church. Its steepled cross before me, I left him behind me, moving on without giving him much more thought.

An hour later, I saw him again. He had moved from his position in the Common to less than a block away from the church. The thought crossed my mind that he was seeking out what little respite there was from the heat in the shade of a large building. We hustled on, focusing on the walk toward Faneuil Hall. It was a full day of family and fun, and as we journeyed back to the car eager to get into our car’s air conditioning, the Park Street Church’s steeple popped back into view. And so did that same homeless man.

He was directly across from the church now, again seemingly seeking out sanctuary in its shade. As we walked by him, I noticed that his catheter bag had fallen from where it had been stuffed into the leg of his filthy jeans and was sitting on the ground below his wheelchair. I kept walking, admittedly a bit faster than I had been. My mind kept saying, “He is obviously getting some sort of disability support,” as if that were all the reason I needed to keep on moving. He was someone else's responsibility, not mine.

We got to the end of the street and waited for the light to turn green. My heart began thundering in my chest, and I knew I couldn’t take one more step away from him. God seemed to have bolted my feet to the ground no matter how much I wanted to keep moving.

Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me, until there is peace and joy finally, for you too.” - Frederick Buechner

I grabbed a water bottle, told my husband to wait for me, and raced back to the man. I asked him for permission, then bent down and picked up the catheter bag and relocated it back to where it had been. People on the street walking by were staring at us. I bent close to him and asked if he wanted water, and with muddled speech said, “Yes, help me.” I pressed the water bottle to his lips, his beard brushing against my hands as he drank with long hard pulls. With a voice that did not feel like my own, I asked what else he needed. His chin jerked to the clock on the steeple that he had kept in his view all day, “They are coming for me in 15 minutes. Thank you.”

With tears falling behind my Ray-Bans, I walked back to my family, stone silent. They were tears of regret that it had taken me an entire day to do something more significant than just toss a fast-food gift card at a homeless person so that I could go on about my day as a tourist guilt-free. I was ashamed of myself in how little compassion I had had and how easily I could walk away.

Ashamed, I kept the entire interaction to myself for quite some time. Months upon months later, as I chatted with a friend over the role of compassion in the Christian life, she shared with me these pearls of wisdom,

“Compassion is far more than a natural inclination, compassion is like love itself: a decision. Compassion is love deciding to act mercifully toward another. It is a practice that can dull when we do not choose to nurture it or engage in compassion consistently."

“Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”
I John 3:18

Buechner, F. (1993). Wishful thinking: A seeker's ABC. San Francisco, CA: Harper.