Pastor Ralph Diehl » compassion

COMPASSION

pastordiehl — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:00:16 +0000

I stopped by the DeKalb Hospital yesterday to visit a lady who is a patient there. On my way back out to the parking lot I passed a frail, elderly woman by the front entrance. She was breathing with great difficulty and gasping for breath. I slowed to ask her if she was alright.

But then I noticed blue smoke coming out of her nose. She was puffing away at a cigarette. She couldn’t breathe but was sucking that tobacco smoke down into her lungs.

My immediate reaction was to keep on walking. Her problems were of her own making, right? You can’t help someone who doesn’t want the help, right?

The more I processed this situation the more compassion I had on this woman who was bound up by her addiction. After all these years, she didn’t know that she could be free. There might not be enough healing time left for her. While she did what all her friends did, yet it left her in bondage to the habit that was destroying her final years.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so judgmental of her. Maybe God had set me up with an opportunity and I blew it. How do you deal with people like that?

COMPASSION (Part 2)

pastordiehl — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:00:17 +0000

Voltaire told of a king whose favorite horse was lost, so he offered a reward for finding it. Many wise men tried and failed, but a simpleton in his court found it and brought it back.

“How’d you do it?” asked the king. The man replied, “I thought, if I were a horse where would I go? Putting myself in his place, I soon found him!”

Jesus knows how we think, and that’s how he found you and I. Compassion is just putting yourself in the other person’s place!

Before Peter denied his Lord, Jesus said to him: “When you are converted, strengthen your brothers.” When grace touches your life, you should always reach back to touch another.

The heart of the gospel is that God loved us enough to come to where we were, so that we would love others enough to go to where they are.

Who will you have compassion for today?

COMPASSION (Part 1)

pastordiehl — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:16:46 +0000

Twenty-one years ago, on July 3, 1988, the guided-missile cruiser USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner with 290 souls aboard. All were lost. The ship’s captain had mistakenly thought they were under attack by an F-14 Iranian fighter. It was a tragic mistake.

Because the cruel treatment of American hostages in Iran was still fresh in many minds, public opinion polls opposed paying compensation to the victims’ families. But President Reagan, a hard-liner, approved compensation. Asked by reporters if such payment would send the wrong signal, he replied, “I don’t ever find compassion a bad precedent.”

The feeding of the 5,000 was a miracle born out of compassion. Jesus was moved by the physical and spiritual needs of the people (Matthew 14:14; Mark 6:34). As Christians, we must look at the whole person through the eyes of Jesus. Being moved by compassion always sends the right signal.

When was the last time you showed compassion to someone in need? Tell us about it.