“He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us.”
2 Cor. 1:4
It’s hard for me to have compassion on the masses. It’s much easier to be uninterested, impatient, bothered. It’s more convenient to be distant and unattached. And yet Jesus had compassion on the masses.
“And looking at the multitudes, Jesus had compassion on them, because they were distressed and downcast, like sheep without a shepherd.”
It is easy for me to remember times that I’ve been distressed, downcast, even depressed. Sometimes I become so self-focused that I can think that I am the only one; no one has been where I’ve been or felt what I’ve felt.
But reality is that we are all desperately in need of rescue.
And we lie on the fields of hurt, disillusionment, darkness, suffering. A broken relationship. A lost job. A wayward child. A crushed dream. We hope that someone will care enough to come after us,to risk the mortar, even the friendly fire; to come after us and never give up.
“Bubba was my best good friend. I had to make sure he was ok. And on my way back to find Bubba, well, there was this boy laying on the ground. I couldn’t just let him lay there all alone, scared the way he was, so I grabbed him up and run him out of there. And every time I went back looking for Bubba, somebody else was saying, “Help me, Forrest. Help me!””
-Forrest Gump
When we choose to enter in with someone, to run out onto their battlefield, something changes inside of us. We cannot remain the same. We have opened our heart to pain, indifference, scorn, even abuse. But we also open ourselves up to live and to love fully.
If we truly pursue those on the field in spite of the risk to ourselves, remembering our own woundedness, we are given new eyes. Eyes to see the hurt in others; the same kinds of hurt we’ve felt in our own hearts. We learn to love one- to share in their pain, shame, brokenness and need. And we see that we are the same. We all need rescued.
On our way to learning to love the ‘one’ , we open our hearts to the many. We begin to see the people lying all around; we begin to hear their cries. They are everywhere. And we can no longer ignore them. It just takes one. One person who tugs at our heart. One person that we care so deeply for that we can finally stand in their stead and begin to see with their eyes, listen with ears, feel with their heart. Understand.
We are all the same. We can enter into each others’ battlefields. If we open our heart to one, and do for one- just maybe we can have compassion on the many.