Quotes about Empathy

That's what's so difficult about Jesus' call to love others. On one level, it's easy to love God, because God doesn't smell. God doesn't have bad breath. God doesn't reward kindness with evil. God doesn't make berating comments. Loving God is easy, in this sense. But Jesus really let us have it when he attached our love for God with our love for other people.

How much would every marriage change if we pursued absolute benevolence over our own comfort, happiness, and self-interest?

To become a servant is to become strong spiritually. It means we are free from the petty demands and grievances that ruin so many lives and turn so many hearts into bitter cauldrons of disappointment, self-absorption, and self-pity.

Even if you're a giver who likes to give, it's exhausting being married to a taker. A taker will suck the life out of you in many ways, and in one sense undercut your ability to minister to others.

What if I ran all my actions through this grid: "If my son-in-law treated my daughter the way I'm treating my wife, how would I feel?" Men, that's the way what you're doing looks like to God. Women, just switch the genders. Imagine hearing your (perhaps future) daughter-in-law talking to her friends about your son with the same tone and words you use to describe your husband: How does that feel?

If a woman essentially abandons her family to ambitiously serve God, she will likely display the same lack of compassion and empathy for others as she does for her own family, who feel her absence keenly.

Your heavenly Father-in-Law never takes his eyes off his beloved child. He hears every word uttered in anger toward his children. He sees every act of violence; he witnesses every act of denial, manipulation, and control. Never imagine that he witnesses such assaults with a dispassionate apathy; on the contrary, he feels each slight as though you were persecuting Christ himself.

spend much of their time and effort trying to bring people down to their level of misery rather than blessing others with joy and encouragement.

Start these conversations with questions that seek understanding, not with accusations that seek submission.

It is a sophisticated spiritual challenge to not compare your spouse's weakness with another spouse's strength.

You have to understand before you can respect, and you have to respect before you can fully love. This is a tremendously spiritually therapeutic process, an emptying of myself so I can grow more in my love for others.

Marriage creates a situation in which our desire to be served and coddled can be replaced with a nobler desire to serve others — even to sacrifice for others.