Quotes about Empathy

Why God asks us to forgive: because that is what God is like.

God, help me to see others not as my enemies or as ungodly but rather as thirsty people. And give me the courage and compassion to offer your Living Water, which alone quenches deep thirst.

Caught up in righteous—and wholly appropriate—revulsion over Serbian atrocities, the world overlooks one fact: the Serbs are simply following the terrible logic of unforgiveness.

For Jesus, the person was more important than any category or label.

God is present in the hungry, the homeless, the sick, and the imprisoned, as Jesus claimed in Matthew 25, and we serve God when we serve them.

Breaking the cycle of ungrace means taking the initiative. Instead of waiting for his neighbor to make the first move

Our need to give is every bit as desperate as the poor's need to receive.

King clung to nonviolence because he profoundly believed that only a movement based on love could keep the oppressed from becoming a mirror image of their oppressors. He wanted to change the hearts of the white people, yes, but in a way that did not in the process harden the hearts of the blacks he was leading toward freedom. Nonviolence, he believed, 'will save the Negro from seeking to substitute one tyranny for another.

involvement with others was the most effective in quelling her pain.

the same answer from suffering people: it matters little what we say — our concern and availability matter far more.

Lewis Smedes points out, "The first and often the only person to be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiveness. . . . When we genuinely forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner we set free was us.

the same answer from suffering people: it matters little what we say — our concern and availability matter far more. If we can offer a listening ear, that may be the most appreciated gift of all.