5 Days of Heartwork: What's In Your Hands?Sample

Compassion: What Are These Hands For, Anyway?

Heart //

Yesterday we explored our identity as sons and daughters, and therefore heirs, of God. Upon the strength of this realization we can begin emptying our hands of self-focus and our not-so-great identities (it really doesn’t get any better than “child of God!”). 

So here’s a question. Have you ever gotten a cast off of your wrist? Well, the moment the fiberglass and cotton break free from your arm, you get a bit weirded out. Your skin is so pale! Your arm and hand look so skinny! As you look down at your newly free hand, you realize it’s been out of proper use for so long that it looks and feels a little bit alien... A little bit weak. 

Now that you’re learning to free your hands of the bondages that may have kept you trapped in selfishness, you may feel that same way! 

But don’t be afraid, discouraged, or quick to run back to the things you just put down. No one who’d just had a cast removed has ever asked to put it back just because it looks and feels strange. It’s just time for us to return our own hands to proper use! And for followers of Christ, that proper use is to be showing compassion. In this way, by using our hands to help those in need, we may show our family likeness to God. We’re made to be God-filled givers, not just takers in this big crazy world.

Practically speaking, what does this compassion look like? Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan helps us here. The Good Samaritan first “saw” the man, “took pity on him,” and then “went to him and bandaged his wounds.” Compassion not only sees and sympathizes with the need – compassion touches the need. It would have been easy for the man to walk away, much like it’s often easy for us to walk away. Lack of time, and lack of empathy or lack of money often keep us from compassion. We all want to see ourselves as the Good Samaritan, but there’s a reason the first two men walked right on by, doing nothing... It’s much easier. Maybe they felt inadequate. How often do we feel and act the same?

Even if our time feels too limited, our bank accounts too low, our desire to help too weak – Our God is the source of ever-renewing compassion (Lamentations 3:22). May God be our well of kindness when we feel inadequate! And did you know, at it’s root, “compassion” means to “co-suffer.” Often, being compassionate doesn’t mean “fixing it”! Our hands cannot fix every problem of those in need. Christ’s pierced hands do that! Sometimes our role is to just see and sit with those in need… To love, encourage and point them to Jesus. The compassion that God empowers us to give to the world is often much simpler than we may think! 

// Work

Think about these realities*: 

1. Worldwide, stunted growth as a result of malnutrition affected almost 23% of children under 5 in 2016. Meanwhile 1/3 of the world's food is WASTED every year. 

2. Unsafe water kills 315,000 children each year. 

3. There are elderly, hospitalized, homeless, and lonely people in your city who could really use a friend.

4. Thousands are enslaved in trafficking in the U.S. alone (over 20 million worldwide). 

5. In your own neighborhood there are people who are living life without the love and power of Jesus. 

These are real people, with real needs, who are living both in our own communities and around this globe we call home. Evaluate these areas of your life: time, money, and desire. Have your newly freed hands given you any more time, any extra cash, or any heightened sensitivity that you can pour into the needs of your community, country, or world?

Try writing a letter to someone who is lonely or hurting today. Maybe someone at school, a prisoner, someone in a hospital or nursing home. Even if you don't have the means to deliver it, practice saying kind things, speaking life and truth, and loving without judgement. 

*Statistics from compassion.com  and dosomething.org