It is not an easy thing to find someone who cares about you as a person and acts in your interest because of their concern. It is inherent and expected that families care about those within the family unit whether immediate or extended in various connecting and loving ways. Compassion is also expected in a true friendship in concern for another person and in the loyal willingness to invest and involve oneself in the life on another. Compassion from the culture around us is varied and unpredictable.
We all need compassion from one another. By definition, compassion is a sympathetic consciousness of another and out of it, love brings forth the basis and actions that help us function, cope and live out our days on this earth. Yet compassion, given and received, feigns and fades as we as human beings must contend with the limitations and frailties of being human.
Yet there is “One” whose compassions fail not (Lamentations 3:22). Jesus lived out the compassion of God in the flesh as He both saw the needs those around him and lovingly and miraculously brought redeeming action to every situation he saw, felt and encountered. Jesus was the compassion of God as He loved and lived. He lived to feed the tired and hungry, both physical and spiritual food. He lived to bring healing to the needy while lifting up the broken and liberating the captive of sin and despair. Jesus was the compassion of God in the flesh addressing every need as He loved with the love of God.
The compassion of Jesus is extraordinary. The compassion that marked His life on the earth is the way He is now. It is not only that He sees and hears us, but He attends to us. As He died, we see the compassion of Jesus in one of the greatest example of compassion possible, as He attends to the request from the condemned man on the nearby cross. Jesus was weakened to the point of death, emotionally and spiritually drained, isolated and abandoned with the weight of the sin of the world laid upon Him. Yet He responds to this condemned man of sin, in love with the gift of eternal life. How can we ever doubt that Jesus will not see us, hear us and compassionately attend to us?
Then he said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:42-43 NKJV).
