Thought for the Week, 18.9.2023      Compassion 

  Last Sunday’s Psalm was part of number 103 and the refrain was:

‘The Lord is full of compassion and mercy,

Slow to anger and of great kindness.’

  Most mornings, Tony and I say a very short office of early prayer which includes the following words:

‘Forgive my many sins and, as you forgive me, may I learn to be forgiving and compassionate towards others in return’.

It is, of course, a paraphrase of part of the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us’.

  The highlighted words signify that receiving and showing forgiveness are both hallmarks of the way of life for which Jesus instructed His disciples to pray. It is a life which is communal – lived out in company with others in the constant presence and under the constant protection of our Father in Heaven. Life is a gift from God which we share with the whole of creation.

  The word ‘compassion’ crops up a lot in the gospels. Jesus uses it to describe the good Samaritan’s reaction to the injured man in the parable; it describes Jesus’ own reaction to the bereaved widow of Nain; and Jesus uses the word again in my favourite parable of all, the Prodigal Son:

‘And he arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him….’

  All that the son had to do was to set his face for home and the father was there to receive him, to forgive him everything and to welcome him back into the family. This, Jesus said, is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like: abounding in compassion. Jesus clearly saw compassion as fundamental to His message, fundamental to people’s relationship to God and to each other.

The word ‘compassion’ is derived from a Latin one meaning ‘to suffer with’, and, hence ‘to pity’. Compassions is what Jesus was about – becoming human and suffering alongside His fellow human beings – suffering in the sense of undergoing all the experiences of life. He shared a wide range of human experiences and urged his disciples to weep with those who weep and to rejoice with those who rejoice, as He did. 

So, reflecting on compassion every morning, I have come to believe that trying to imagine what it is like being someone else, seeking to understand in as deep a way as possible how it is to be in their situation, is what God wants me to do, day by day, in everything that I attempt.

“O Lord, baptize our hearts into a sense of the conditions and needs of all men.” (George Fox, 1624-91)