Compassion

Compassion

I’d had a year. I mean, a year. It began with the unexpected death of my mother, followed by three other deaths, two more eulogies delivered, the slow and silent withering of a once-vital friendship, work challenges, financial storms, and health issues exacerbated by factors far beyond my control.

So when I found myself sitting in the doctor’s office hoping to find a way to keep a chronic condition at bay without treatment I couldn’t afford, I simply couldn’t stop the tears. In that moment my very wise and kind physician met me with a compassion that was utterly Christlike. As I blubbered, she rolled her stool over in front of me, took both my hands in hers, and simply said, “Let’s get to work.”

I assumed she was about to take me through a series of familiar diagnostics related to my condition. But she didn’t. She held my hands in hers and began to pray. She called on the name of Jesus. She prayed for my health and my heart and for my God to make a way for me to get the treatment that I needed. She prayed for wisdom, for peace, and for mercy. And she asked the Father to give me a boundless supply of hope and encouragement. I was crying even harder by the time we both whispered, “Amen” but feeling far better than before.

Leaving the hospital in a way I do not normally go, I noticed a sculpture I’d never seen before. I set down my coffee cup to examine it more closely. Compassion’s Touch, the plaque below it read, and I stood for a long time looking at those two bronze hands—hands obviously belonging to two different people and softly touching in a way that communicated human love and mercy. I couldn’t help touching them too and running my hands of flesh along those lovely hands of metal.

Sometimes, as my compassionate doctor demonstrated, human touch says more than words can. Sometimes, prayer is stronger than pernicious antibodies in my own blood gone rogue. I don’t know how all of this will work out. But I know the Father knows—and that he has ready hands that stand in for his in places I cannot even imagine. None of us, no matter what, are beyond his compassionate touch.

LORD, don’t hold back your tender mercies from me.

Psalm 40:11