From the Home Place

October 11, 2025

Welcome to yet another Saturday. I’m sure that this day will find each of us busy with some kind of a plan for the day. After all, it’s the weekend and we have things we need, or want to do! From working on the house or yard, to attending a sports event, to going shopping, to going hunting, to having a friend or two over to watch an event on the television, to volunteering to take part in an event within your community. It’s Saturday and we have plans to accomplish something!

Yet we realize that whatever activity we have planned for today, those plans can change in a moment. Tragedy, or bad news, can strike at any second, and all of our plans are immediately changed.

If you are one of those families who will need to deal with bad news today, I truly am sorry. The Apostle Paul told us that when one part of the body hurts, all of the body hurts. Of course, Paul is speaking of the body of Christ, specifically your church family.

For the last two days, I and a friend have worked full time on the house. After two days of up and down ladders, lifting sheets of steel siding and spending a large portion of the day on my knees making sure that the bottom portion of each of siding fits correctly, my body hurts, especially my joints. As all older folks know, when your joints ache from overwork, the rest of the body hurts as well.

That’s the pain Paul is speaking of, yet Paul is going much deeper than hurting joints. Paul is speaking of having compassion for the people around us when their life hurts. It would appear that from physical suffering, to emotional pain, to spiritual attacks, there is plenty of pain to go around. Those things that none of us go looking for, still show up in a moment’s notice, and it hurts.

Feeling the pain of others, with others, is called compassion. The first mention of the word compassion is found in Genesis 19:16 where the angels of Lord are taking Lot and his family out of Sodom. Because of Lot’s hesitancy to go, the angels take his family members by the hand and lead them out of danger. Why? We read because, “the compassion of the Lord was upon him.” When our lives hurt, or are in danger, “the compassion of the Lord” is with us. When your life hurts, God also feels your hurt.

In the New Testament book of Matthew, we read this of Jesus when He looked at people who were attempting to live their lives without having a close walk with God. “Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.” The people were in spiritual pain, and Jesus “felt compassion for them.”

So now, I have to ask the question, “When we see people in pain, do we have compassion for them?” Perhaps we should define the word compassion – It literally means to experience the pain of another. We will often tell folks who are in pain, “I’m sorry,” but that is not compassion. Jesus felt the spiritual pain of the people before Him, and then He told His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”

Jesus saw the pain and took action by challenging His disciples to do something about the issue, that’s compassion. Being sorry for someone’s pain is empathy, compassion is doing something to relieve at least a portion of that pain. There are times that the only action that compassion can take is to just be present when someone is in pain.

Words can assist, but there is nothing like just being there during seasons of pain. But to have compassion for others requires that I must forfeit my plans for today and be present with the person in pain. If miles prevent you from being present, then words will have to do for now. But those words must be spoken to the person in pain, not just a comment of, “Oh, I hurt for __________ at this time.” Words spoken to self, do nothing to heal the pain of another. Compassion requires action to help someone else deal with their pain. We must step away from our plans, and toward the person in pain!

We will go ahead with our plans for today, but if we are made aware of pain in another’s life, will we have empathy or compassion, or will we just be too busy to really even care? Friends, my prayer for each of us is that we will be a compassionate people, feeling the pain of others, with others.

Showing compassion for others with you, Neal