From Contempt to Compassion
More often than not, my growth in Christ-likeness has been a slow, almost indiscernible process. It is like losing weight in that the day-to-day or even week-to-week changes are not really noticeable, but then a year down the road you look into the mirror and a different person is looking back. Sometimes realization just smacks you in the face about how your heart has changed. I had one such moment this past week.
While dining out the other night with my friend Frank, the two tables next to us were both occupied by a mother and a child. The table nearest to us, the mother was gabbing on her mobile phone the entire time. The young boy, probably 7, ate quietly, staring up at the TV on the wall. At the other table, a mother sat reading a newspaper, while the young girl, probably 8 or 9, ate quietly, staring up at the TV on the wall.
The mother on the phone was quite loud, rather animated and I could hear the entirety of her half of the conversation with a girlfriend, about the girlfriend’s boyfriend. The old Joshua would have been extremely annoyed. Honestly, my thought process would have been something like “ugh, I wish that heifer would just shut the hell up and stop disrupting my dinner, I can’t even carry a conversation because of her shrill tone poisoning my thoughts”. The other mother I would have not even noticed. However, that was me before God wrecked my thought life.
This time, my heart broke. I sat there, ready to weep for those kids and their inattentive moms and absent dads. Honestly, the children may as well have not even existed. The look on the young boy’s face was blank, glazed over by the flicker of the TV screen, his body folded and withdrawn. Sporadically he’d glance up longingly to his mother, who never noticed and never looked at him. The young girl, older and bolder, would try and strike up conversation with her newspaper- reading mom, only to be met with a terse response that didn’t even warrant eye contact. After two or three attempts, defeated, she tried no more. Instead consoling her grief with animated antics on a television too distant to hear.
Similar scenes played themselves out all across this casual buffet restaurant with parents and children in various compositions and various levels of distance, far greater than a table’s width. I prayed for these kids and their families. I prayed for all the kids in my city who lived distant from their parents’ affection and involvement.
At the other end of the restaurant sat a lone gay man. Too often I struggle to view homosexuals with love and compassion. We exist in a time where the two loudest public voices are either “accept and affirm”, which I cannot, or “vilify and condemn”, which I will not. Both extremes and both unbiblical. Most often my reaction is one of slight disgust and indifference. That night, I simply felt sad for him. Again I prayed.
Now please don’t be misled. There are plenty of times I get annoyed at people and lack the compassion and love I’m called to. There are plenty of times I fall so short and choose to be indignant, when the situation calls for consideration. I have confessed it so many times, yet full repentance alludes me still.
However, on this night, compassion trickled out of me. I pray for the day when its deluge inundates me and my eyes are incapable of seeing people as inconveniences. The day when my heart knows no response except to recognize each person as someone for whom Christ loved enough to die and as someone that deserves the same love and honor I invest in myself.
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Hey man, interesting read! I have to concur in society today it’s a shame how we all get wrapped up in our own lives that we forget about what matters most from our kids, families, or even special friends that are extended family members just by focusing on what we want. We’re all guilty of this… sacrificing ourselves for the needs of another individual, whether it’s flesh and blood or special loved ones, is very hard. We get too concerned about what we want and being so selfish we forget the needs of others. Thanks for sharing… now I need to pray tonight about this!
That’s my site above, don’t look for erroes because there are many and I don’t have a desire to fix them at this time… but I thought I’d share!!