Quotes About Compassion

At family gatherings where you suddenly feel homicidal or suicidal, remember that in half of all cases, it's a miracle that this annoying person even lived. Earth is Forgiveness School. You might as well start at the dinner table. That way, you can do this work in comfortable pants.1 — ANNE LAMOTT

We are called to this work, and it might not seem like much, but if you play your one note and I play mine and she plays hers, together it will create a beautiful song that sounds like freedom for the captives and good news to the poor. May the broken-hearted be healed and ashes turned to beauty in our generation. God, make us worthy of Your calling.

We mustn't use the sorrow of another to reinforce our joy, even unintentionally.

Loved people forgive and encourage, serve and uplift, because they are precious to someone.

Love God and follow Him. Really, nothing else matters. If you are ever unsure what to do, remember how Jesus loved people. He was the best at it. You can trust Him because anywhere He asks you to go, He has been there too. This is not an easy path, Lovies. Jesus went to hard places and did hard things; He loved folks everyone else hated or despised. But if you trust us at all, believe me: this is the life you want, this Jesus life.

A worthy life involves loving as loved folks do, sharing the ridiculous mercy God spoiled us with first. (It really is ridiculous.) It means restoring people, in ordinary conversations and regular encounters. A worthy life means showing up when showing up is the only thing to do.

chronic homelessness, most having experienced at least one year on the street. The marks of such homelessness go much deeper than can be solved solely by the acquisition of a home.

Love means saying to someone else's story or pain or anger or experience: "I'm listening. Tell me more." Love refuses to deny or dismantle another's perspective simply because I don't share it.

Life is severe and coping is harder for some than others. We can make the journey trickier or easier, smoothing the path with grace or complicating it with more obstacles. This person is here to stay for the foreseeable future or forever, so he is a necessary member of your tribe. You can exercise compassion without enabling misconduct.

People may hate us because of Jesus, but they should never hate Jesus because of us. The way we treat others should lead them to only one conclusion:

Anytime the rich and poor combine, we should listen to whoever has the least power.

God is here and we are not alone. We can't deliver folks from their pits, but we can sure get in there with them until God does. Live long enough and it becomes clear that stuff is not the stuff of life. People are. We need each other, so we probably ought to practice radical grace, because our well-flaunted opinions are cold companions when real life hits.

Tell me more about that. Tell me how your thoughts progressed in this. I appreciate your experience with this. I'm listening. I hear what you are saying. I would love to learn from you. I care about how you feel and your perspective here. I understand that. I identify with that. What do you think of __________? I hadn't thought of it in that way. Thank you for that angle. Let me think about that a bit before I respond. Thanks for your transparency.

kids are absolutely capable of spiritual depth. Let's teach them to serve and care about the world beyond their Xboxes. And we have to lead with our lives, not just our lips, because kids can smell a fake.

God never turns away a seeker and neither should we.

Marriage is no place to be inordinately sensitive. We cannot prickle over every little thing. Learn to hold the biting remark, the wounded reaction, the irritated retort. Married tongues should be shredded with the amount of ugly words bitten back. Everything cannot be a big deal, because when the big deals actually happen, we're too worn-out to handle them.

I pray for your kindness more than your success, because the latter without the former is a tragedy.

Ignorant intervention is absolutely a contributing factor to cycles of oppression. This

We are only qualified to administer mercy, not judgment, because we will pull up many a beautiful stalk of wheat, imagining him a weed.

When Jesus said to "love your neighbor as yourself," I don't think He meant judgmentally; but that is exactly how we treat our own souls, so it bleeds out to others.

Guilt is not Jesus' medium. He is battling for global redemption right now; His objective hardly includes huddling in the corner with us, rehashing our shame again. He finished that discussion on the cross. Plus, there's no time for that.

I dream of a church that is once again called great, even by our skeptics, because our works of mercy cannot be denied.

There is a biblical benchmark I now use. We will refer to this criterion for every hard question, big idea, topic, assessment of our own obedience, every "should" or "should not" and "will" or "will not" we ascribe to God, every theological sound bite. Here it is: If it isn't also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn't true.

Honestly, I love Jesus but sometimes His followers give me a migraine.