Compassion & Sympathy
Charles Cash
Siloam Springs AR
7/1/98
Compassion & Sympathy
Live in harmony with one another, be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.
I Peter 3.3
Be compassionate! Be sympathetic! These virtues grow out of love. They are love! Pragmatic! The root word for compassion is
compass, to see all around our neighbors’ needs. Love is answering needs. Tolstoy called dispassion
dishonesty of the soul. W. E. Vine, the noted lexicographer, tells us that word compassion means
to be torn inwardly, to share grief as though it were your own. Someone has said,
Make no judgments where you have no compassion.
But you, O Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God. Psalm 86.15. Aren’t you glad?
The Lord is gracious and compassionate. Psalm 111.4. When Jesus saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9.36. Statistics are human beings with the tears wiped off, said Paul Brodeur. With Jesus, people weren’t just statistics. The kingdom is not statistical, but personal. The shepherd leaves the ninety and nine and goes to find the one which was lost.
Perhaps there is no virtue that makes us more Christlike than does compassion. No virtue is more rewarding. Compassion begets compassion. Also, the more we focus on the needs of others, the less intense become our own needs, hurts and wants. One great army surgeon said,
Wars go on because there is no way in which one man can feel in his own body the pain which another suffers. We cannot heal the wounds we do not feel.
Be compassionate.
—Charles Cash
Siloam Springs, AR
