Compassion

Frederick Beuchner once said, "Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it's 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."

I really wish that some in the Christian tradition would get this. Why do we choose judgment and hate over compassion, mercy, and grace. I've been thinking alot about God's Justice and God's Compassion. If God is all merciful and loving, I'm not sure how God can hate, or exclude anyone in God's Kingdom. Okay. I know God is wrathful and that God is to be feared, and that God judges, but at what point is God's Justice more restorative than retributive. If God's Justice is restorative, doesn't God's mercy and compassion win the day? If God is the God of Creation, and if God is the God who says that NOTHING (not even hell) can separate us from God's love, then why do we hold back our love from others? If God is compassionate, then doesn't God want to reach out to those who hurt, to those who are scorned, to those whom are excluded?

Again, we are called to be compassionate! We are called to enter into the skin of people who are hurting. We are called to listen to people's stories, to value their stories, to love them unconditionally, and to have compassion on them.

So God, grant that we have compassion to those on the outside. Grant that we can be at peace with one another, and that we can love one another. Grant that we would have the fatal capacity to know what it is like to be in the skin of those who suffer. Let us listen to the stories of those who are excluded, and who find themselves on the outside. Grant us peace. Grant us love. Grant us compassion.