I’ve thought about writing a post this week, but I just wasn’t feelin’ it. Maybe because, like a lot of you, I was feelin’ “it.” IT was Hurricane Sandy. To have today be a regular “feed me Friday” seemed kind of … sour.
Watching the images of suffering around the East Coast area of the United States effected by Hurricane Sandy, my heart has been tired with watching and absorbing, empathizing with people. Has it seemed far away from you? If you count the miles today, it’s not that close to where I live today, but it’s such a part of my story.
Sandy took aim at the stage of my life’s story, and yet so many people are living out theirs in her aftermath today. Our family vacationed along the Outer Banks in North Carolina for many summers with friends who were discipling my newly believing parents. It was there we rode out our own storm in a swaying house on stilts. It was there God taught me what it means to be saved by the rescue of a Father’s sacrifice. It’s a story I sometimes share when I share my testimony or speak around Father’s Day. Not far from those shores, I found my first young love and then walked on the now-gone boardwalk with my forever love. Along that coast I spent a summer as a camp counselor and learned so much about who God made me. Strangely enough, when my family first arrived in a young America in the early 1600’s, we first settled in the area now swamped in Manhattan. Sandy hit the settings of so much of my history, and I have vivid images of the places impacted by the storm. Feeling the pain of others can feel … painful.
But God calls us to be compassionate when people have needs. Yesterday in my group studying Carol Kent’s Becoming a Woman of Influence, we read from Matthew 9:35-37. “And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few…”
Another version says “his heart broke” as he looked over the people. He wants us to resist the urge to look away and, instead, to see people and their hurting, let ourselves feel their pain, and respond. I love action like the Hurricane Sandy Response by Samaritan’s Purse, helping followers of Jesus have a trusted way to engage in practical compassion.
I can’t help but think about those who experienced Sandy and those who will feel her wrath for the rest of their lives, like the mom whose two little boys were separated from her and washed away on State Island. God uses need to build our belief, and He wants to use compassion as the tool to do it.
Let’s look at the people around us today. Let’s ask God to give us a compassionate heart, and let’s be a tool to build belief out of need.
Sometimes people face suffering just because they’re followers of Jesus. Join me today at Do Not Depart where I share about the women of Romania and how we can be Faithful in Persecution.
