Quotes About Compassion

Whenever possible, you gotta try to see the goings-on of life through more eyes than just your own, because that can help you see things more clearly.

Prayers and wishes should always be good, but we all think bad thoughts when our feelings get hurt. It's human, V." -Mom

My life is better when I assume that people are doing their best. It keeps me out of judgment and lets me focus on what is, and not what should or could be.

If we share our shame story with the wrong person, they can easily become one more piece of flying debris in an already dangerous storm.

Until we can receive with an open heart, we are never really giving with an open heart.

Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling.(page 68)

Those who feel lovable, who love, and who experience belonging simply believe they are worthy of love and belonging. I often say that Wholeheartedness is like the North Star: We never really arrive, but we certainly know if we're headed in the right direction.

Cruelty is easy, cheap and rampant.

When we're suffering, may of us are better at causing pain than feeling it. We spread hurt rather than let it inside.

we can only love others as much as we love ourselves

we unwittingly project onto God our own attitudes and feelings toward ourselves... But we cannot assume that He feels about us the way we feel about ourselves -- unless we love ourselves compassionately, intensely, and freely.

The litmus test of our love for God is our love of neighbor.

The sinners to whom Jesus directed His messianic ministry were not those who skipped morning devotions or Sunday church. His ministry was to those whom society considered real sinners. They had done nothing to merit salvation. Yet they opened themselves to the gift that was offered them. On the other hand, the self-righteous placed their trust in the works of the Law and closed their hearts to the message of grace.

Live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness. Tenderness awakens within the security of knowing we are thoroughly and sincerely liked by someone... Scripture suggests that the essence of the divine nature is compassion and that the heart of God is defined by tenderness.

Only reckless confidence in a Source greater than ourselves can empower us to forgive the woulds inflicted by others.

Experience has taught me that I connect best with others when I connect with the core of myself. When I allow God to liberate me from unhealthy dependence on people, I listen more attentively, love more unselfishly, and am more compassionate and playful. I take myself less seriously, become aware that the breath of the Father is on my face.

When a person is evoked for who she is, not who she is not, the most often result will be the inner healing of her heart through the touch of affirmation. Jesus said you are to love one another as I have loved you, a love that will possibly lead to the bloody, anguish gift of yourself, a love that forgives seven times seven, that keeps no record of wrong. This is the criterion, sole norm, the standard of discipleship in the New Israel of God.

God loves you unconditionally, as you are and not as you should be, because nobody is as they should be.

The ragamuffin gospel reveals that Jesus forgives sins, including the sins of the flesh; that He is comfortable with sinners who remember how to show compassion; but that He cannot and will not have a relationship with pretenders in the Spirit.

Whenever I allow anything but tenderness and compassion to dictate my response to life--be it self-righteous anger, moralizing, defensiveness, the pressing need to change others...I am alienated from my true self. My identity as Abba's child [a child of God] becomes ambiguous, tentative and confused

This is the God of the gospel of grace. A God who, out of love for us, sent the only Son He ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for His milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed to a cross, and died whispering forgiveness on us all.

God loves us as we are...not as we ought to be. because we are never going to be as we ought to be." --Brennan Manning

Jesus says. "Acknowledge and accept who I want to be for you: a Savior of boundless compassion, infinite patience, unbearable forgiveness, and love that keeps no score of wrongs. Quit projecting onto Me your own feelings about yourself. At this moment your life is a bruised reed and I will not crush it, a smoldering wick and I will not quench it. You are in a safe place." Brennan Manning. Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

And though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinner at a distance