Quotes about Empathy

Through years of maturing, I've learned that it's not our job to force our beliefs down others' throats until they echo back what we want to hear. No, our job is to challenge their categories by doing the same things Jesus did: loving them, challenging them, accepting them, and forgiving them.

Make sure that the person you're in the room with is the most important person in the world when you're together.

Pause for a moment and prayerfully consider your response: What breaks your heart?

When he chose friends, Jesus surrounded himself with the lonely, the broken, and the overlooked. God is calling you to be a part of his church, to be his church. If you don't feel like you're good enough, then you're exactly who he's looking for.

When I ask God to change my actions, that honesty about my own inconsistent behaviors forces me not to be so hard on other believers. Humble acknowledgment of the plank in my own eye gives me more patience with the specks in everyone else's (see Matthew 7:1-5). Instead of pointing the finger at others, let's allow God to examine us.

We find our lives when we give them away.

Rather than being concerned only with my hopes, my dreams, my concerns, I was called to shepherd others. To love them, hurt with them, pour into them.

One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it, and the journey is always towards the other soul.

It's easier to get people to talk to you if you're a vet and you want to interview a vet about war. Sometimes they open up a little bit easier.

The notion that we have even one single veteran living on the streets should be just considered a travesty to all of us.

It's always good to have other people who you can lean on and pick you up when you're down and vice versa.

For any victim, particularly us Americans, it is difficult to see ourselves through the eyes of our offender. But for any victim it is the most salutary thing to do.