Quotes about Compassion

Any situation that calls me to confront my selfishness has enormous spiritual value.

Let us become intentional to use personal slights, inconveniences, acts of gossip and slander, times of difficulty, and even sickness as opportunities to grow in patience and understanding and humility instead of bitterly resenting each one.

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?

I no longer call you servants,…I have called you friends."14 Servants is a "doing" word; friends is a "being" word. What do servants do? They cook, clean, et cetera. A friend, however, is something you are, not something you do. A servant is Martha, a friend is Mary.

Humility is about the little things in life, and marriage is 90 percent small stuff. We don't build humility on giant gestures as much as forge it with consistent, thoughtful actions day after day.

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.

God is radically for people. He wants everyone to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4). As his followers, we also must be for everyone, even if we oppose what they're doing. If we must live and work with toxic people, our call is to make sure their toxicity doesn't become ours. We don't treat them as they treat us. We don't offer evil in exchange for evil. We love. We serve. We guard our hearts so that we are not poisoned by their bad example.

None of us can live up to the law; all of us will break it. Marriage teaches us — indeed, it practically forces us — to learn to live by extending grace and forgiveness to people who have sinned against us. If I can learn to forgive and accept my imperfect spouse, I'll be well equipped to offer forgiveness outside my marriage. Forgiveness, I'm convinced, is so unnatural an act that it takes practice to perfect it.

life is richest when you give each moment of each day to God with the prayer, "Let me receive your love and pour it out on these people so that I can represent you every minute of the day."

response—"Lord, how can I love him [or her] today like he [or she] has never been loved?" The answer may be very practical: take over a chore, speak a word of encouragement, take care of something that needs fixing. Or it may be romantic, or over-the-top creative, or generous, or very simple.