Jonah had a hard time feeling compassion. You remember Jonah – the one who got swallowed by a whale? God wanted him to preach and minister to a foreign land, filled with unbelievers, but Jonah felt they didn’t deserve God’s mercy. So he refused and caught a ride on a boat going the opposite direction. God sent a massive storm, and the boat nearly went down, but Jonah knew the storm was due to his own stubbornness. He volunteered to go overboard, and as soon as he did, the storm stopped, saving all onboard. But Jonah was swallowed by that whale for three days before being spit up on the land. He still protested, but eventually did what God told him to do, and many people came to know the true God.
Was he compassionate? He didn’t seem to be. Did God still use him? Yes.
We are called to share our lives, and our compassion, with those in our church family. Sometimes this is hard to do. Sometimes we’d rather protect ourselves. Sometimes we’re just fed up with other people, even those who are our fellow Christians. But we can still live in harmony with them.
We can play music without feeling. Even AI models can probably reproduce wonderful performances, and many people wouldn’t even know it wasn’t an original human concert. Sometimes, that’s enough. Not always, but sometimes.
Different situations call for different responses, but we can always be aware of people’s needs. We can give ground when we need to. We can offer support without giving way ourselves. We can demonstrate compassion with action instead of false and shallow emotions. We may not be able to reach the level of Christ’s compassion in this life here on Earth, but we can strive toward that goal, and in all these ways, we can live together as the body of Christ.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
1 John 3:16-18