Thanks for stopping by! This is Day 28 of my 2015 “31 Days Reflecting on God” series. Find the rest over here.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.
For he knows what we are made of;
he realizes we are made of clay.
Psalm 103:13-14
On months when I’ve been stuck inside city limits, I miss Kansas, with its giant open skies. I miss Colorado, where you could drive 30 minutes and be standing on the cliff of a mountain. I miss Peru where you could see for miles down the coastline of Pacific waves crashing against the deserted beach.
Something about creation dwarfs us sometimes, in a good way. It’s good to be reminded just who we are. Otherwise we get stuck looking at ourselves and see ourselves as the center in our worlds and that feels a little too attractive.
When I battle feeling inadequate, I read this verse from Psalms again. God remembers we are made of clay. He doesn’t expect some brand of perfect from us. He doesn’t stand waiting to smack our heads when we trip over ourselves.
I don’t have much natural compassion. Too often my first thought is, “Suck it up, people.” Great for a woman in full-time church ministry and a mom, I know. So sometimes I ask God to give me a heart of mercy for others. I don’t know why I do that, because that gives him permission to break my heart.
If we let him, God will open our eyes to see things as he sees them. He doesn’t just look on the outside – he sees straight to the heart. And our hearts are not pretty places, friends. Our hearts can be straight up ugly, broken battlefields where the unthinkable lives or has lived, leaving us shattered in its wake.
So when I pray, “God, give me compassion like you,” he says something like, “Ok, look over here and see this marathon bombing. Think about what kind of inner pain caused a teenage boy to become an assassin. And the horrors the people living through it are going to re-experience in their dreams as they recover. See how ugly hate can be – not just in its actions but also at its core. Something always causes that hate.”
God sees and understands all pain. All imperfection. All brokenness. Like a daddy comforting his crying child, he feels our hurts and humanness.
Christians are so human, by the way. We tend to look on the outside just like everyone else. Maybe more so, because we want to look good and get embarrassed when we or our organizations don’t. That attitude piles insult on injury on the people around us.
We of all people should understand the inadequacy of our humanity. If we have even slightly tasted the grace of God we talk about we should reflect his compassion.
Let’s dump this weight of being perfect and looking good on the side of the road. Then once we’re free of it, we can help others get leave it behind as well. God understands we are human. We don’t have to pretend that we’re not.