Quotes About Compassion

You don't really know who you are until you have gone through suffering.

People familiar with shame are willing to wash feet, but they are uncomfortable with other people washing their feet. They are better at serving than being served. Well, get used to being served.

What is shame? God identifies it. God experienced it. You are not alone.

The visitor (what Scripture calls the "foreigner" or "alien") comes first. The visitor who returns comes next. The less popular, the introverts, the marginalized, or those sitting alone come next. Then come the children. Jesus singles them out as examples of the marginalized. "Hi, _______" is offered to as many people as possible, which doesn't have to be accompanied by a hug or a handshake.

Side by side is most suitable for helping. We

Love is able to see past the clutter of a disorganized life.

Love is the opposite of anger. Anger is disdain, hatred, and contempt.

What is the way out of shame? It is the way of humility, not humiliation. It is the way of being known, not exposed.

In our attempts to help, we can overinterpret suffering

How does God move toward you?

do not end the conversation without an offer to pray. Ask what he needs prayer for and either pray right then or pray later and then follow up the next time you see him.

If you know you have been forgiven, you will forgive and reconcile with others.

Once we pray with or for someone, we are in the ongoing story of his life, and it is an honor to be there.

Who in your life is one step ahead of you in knowing people? What does that person do?

We don't aim to draw out problems so that we can be helpers. We are simply interested in knowing another person, which is a basic feature of everyday love.

In an African hospital, a pastor who had just witnessed another death was approached by a poor, elderly woman. "You know," she said, taking my [the pastor's] arm, "through many losses of family and friends and through much sorrow, the Lord has taught me one thing. Jesus Christ did not come to take away our pain and suffering, but to share in it."2

most gifts emerge in the context of serving people.

All anyone can hope for is just a tiny bit of love, manman says, like a drop in a cup if you can get it, or a waterfall, a flood, if you can get that too.

Your son is my friend,...He is my very terrible and imperfect and dear friend.

She cannot stay out of duty. The things one does, one should do out of love.

But how long will this kind of tolerance last? How long can anyone bear to live with someone whose mind wanders off to a place where their love no longer exists?

I didn't feel guilty about burning my mother's name anymore. I knew my hurt and hers were links in a long chain and if she hurt me, it was because she was hurt, too.

Each death frames previous deaths in a different light, and even deaths to come. During the time my mother was sick, I found myself crying uncontrollably over the deaths of people I barely knew.

Whenever there is someone in a family who has long been ill, and hopelessly ill," he wrote, "there come painful moments when all timidly, secretly, at the bottom of their hearts long for his death.