Quotes about Compassion

If our prayers for others mean anything at all, they cannot be cloistered away all the time in sanitised environments. Standing in the gap for the oppressed may well mean that it matters where we pray and how we pray, and that our prayers for the poor are worked out very practically.

intercession is impossible until we allow the things that break God's heart to break our hearts as well.

Our world is waiting for us to love and show God's heart through his powerful presence.

Here's the question: Will we allow the things that break God's heart to break our hearts too? It'll mean more tears, more listening. It may even be the reason why so many of us struggle with our own personal burdens and heartaches - God is allowing us to feel the pain, to be weak and broken so that our prayers have power.

There is no higher "law" to be obeyed than the law of love. That, at the end of the day, is what it means to follow Jesus.

To love as God loves means loving not just others like us, but those who are not.

If this core mystery of the Christian faith (which I believe can never be truly articulated) is true, and that the Creator not only took part in the human drama, but suffered in that drama, perhaps we have an understanding and compassionate God, not one out to get us?

The role of the church is to be doctor and nurse, not judge and jury.

I still think and talk about what I think God is like, but I've hopefully learned (feel free to keep me honest here, people) that being right and winning isn't the endgame here. Loving as God loves is.

That model is built on seeing God as a relentless, compassionate inner presence in my life, always beckoning me forward. That model is one of peace, curiosity, and hopefulness and rests on my embrace of the mystery and love of God.

But at least I didn't do any harm. Along the way I came to see more and more that being right about God and making sure everyone else agreed with what I knew might not be the most important thing I could do in God's eyes.

Humility, love, and kindness are our grand acts of faithfulness and how we show that we are all in. "No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us" (1 John 4:12). Loving each other is the closest we get to seeing God.