Compassionate Witness

It seemed an ordinary early spring day when I quickly had an occasion to dress a small wound for a day worker in my neighborhood.  As I applied a bandage, tears drops fell on my hand. “Oh”, I said. “Am I hurting you?”  I was surprised at his reply.  “No, it’s just that it has been a very long time since anyone showed any real kindness to me.”  It was indeed an everyday-ordinary day filled with opportunities to show kindness and compassion.

Jesus was a compassionate witness of God’s love as He went through the towns and villages, teaching, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.  He did not confine His acts of kindness and compassion to His own neighborhood.  He went throughout the region doing good to everyone in every place; those exposed to danger as having no shepherd, those considered outcasts, (mentally or physically  diseased) ---- those on a dark path who had lost all hope and any notion of God’s radical tenderness.

"I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a tea cup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God."  The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning

We are called to be His witnesses and servants in a troubled and tortured world.  As we engage with others through acts of kindness and compassion, we light the pathway to relationship with Him.

"There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, kindness and thoughtfulness; and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much."  Mother Teresa

He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.  Isaiah 53:5