To Love......

"Compassion is love in action".

com.pas.sion sympathy, to feel pity, sorrow for the sufferings or trouble of another or others, accompanied by an urge to help; deep sympathy; pity.

This little motto was on our fridge for years and I didn't really think much about it until I started working as a CNA. Then it came home with full force. Here you are doing for a human the most intimate things, the personal chores of every day that one normally takes for granted. Like brushing teeth and hair, bathing and going to the bathroom. But old age and disease make it imperative they have assistance, and some unknown person is there to help. But what if that person is thinking to much of themselves to really offer the help? Perhaps they're there doing the action but in their mind they are groaning over it, being grossed out by it, caught up in the job and not the person. So herein is where compassion comes into action and translates into love.

Actually working with the elderly gave me a glimmer of what Christ Jesus dealt with when he was on earth. Here is the elderly man or women the mind is breaking down therefore all the nasty angry things that are stored up in them are starting to come out. They don’t recognize you as helping them, they think you are trying to hurt them, so they bite at you, slap and pinch you, scream nasty things, throw tantrums and generally are hellions on wheel-chairs. Some are sweet, but that still never makes the job that wonderful to do. But to be of any real use to them you have to triumph over your reaction and be an ambassador of the love of Christ, expressed in kindness and gentle care that will perhaps break through the drug fog and old age.

Jesus Christ had the same people to deal with except he could see not only the outside but the inside as well, see clearly that they were sin filled, bickering, angry humans. The days I’ve had to deal with one human who has no self restraint and lets all their sin come flowing out is a bad day, I feel like I’ve been scrubbed with sand paper and banged up and down on rocks for a while. And I would wonder what it was like for Christ, who day in and day out walked among those for whom he set aside his Godhood to help, with loving kindness he cared for his people who didn’t even recognize him as helping them. This sin, the disgusting, abhorrent, vile, depraved, ugly, sin, was lade bare before him, but he didn’t flinch or draw back, but went forward, loved, touched, and healed. Speaking gentle words and appt rebukes he has compassion on those he came to save. Such compassion that he goes to the cross, laying down his life, he took the sin that was not his own and bore it, so that in him we might have life!

So take this as an encouragement, the power of Christ in you is the same power that carried him to the cross and raised him to life. You too can rise up and have victory, you too can love and have gentle compassion on those whom there is not outside reason to love. And also as a rebuke (I speak to myself as much as anybody) don’t think more highly of yourself then others, don’t get caught up in the me-monster, lay down your life and take up your cross daily. Calling on Christ power to sustain you, so not by your strength but his, you gain the victory.