Compassion
My 4th grader received the compassion award at school recently. The assistant principal stated, “This is a character trait that we cannot teach at school, it has to come from home.” This statement got me thinking about what compassion really means and where it truly comes from.
The Encarta Dictionary defines compassion as “sympathy for the suffering of others, often including a desire to help; concern, kindness, consideration, care”. Sounds like Godly qualities to me.
Wikepedia describes compassion as “a human emotion prompted by the pain of others. More vigorous than empathy, the feeling commonly gives rise to an active desire to alleviate another’s suffering”.
If we believe God is the “God of all comfort” (Cor 1.3) and he created us in his image, shouldn’t we have compassion inside of us? Take a look at the life of Christ, His life was the very embodiment of compassion. As a teacher, He taught us the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Galatians 5:22
Is it really that difficult to teach by example? Are we, as adults, so lacking in the quality of compassion that we are unable to teach it to our children? As a therapist, I could not do the work I do without compassion. I work hard every day to show the children and families I work with that I truly care for them and their success as a family. I believe children and adults, for that matter, learn compassion by being treated compassionately with kindness, gentleness and respect. We must find compassion within ourselves and for ourselves as well as others, then we can begin to teach compassion to our children. Teachers can teach this quality by being a compassionate example to their students. Can we all learn a lesson from the ultimate teacher?
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Col 3:12