My friend Paulus says, “Compassion means we are willing to be disturbed.”
Until recently, I had never considered what the parts of the word “compassion” actually mean together. Let me play English teacher for a few minutes.
When the movie The Passion of the Christ was released, I thought it was strange to use the word “passion” in a movie focused on Christ’s crucifixion, but I soon discovered that, in the context of this movie, passion is another word for suffering.
The prefix com means together. When you combine these two, together and suffering, compassion is a willingness to suffer with another person. It’s the perfect synonym for empathy. It doesn’t just mean that you feel sorry for a person, but that you are ready to enter into suffering with them.
At the start of this blog, I said compassion means we are willing to be disturbed, and I still believe that’s true. But I think you could take it one step further. Compassion is looking someone who is suffering in the eyes and saying, “Please disturb me. Your pain is my pain. Let me bear this burden with you.” This is the kind of compassion our world needs now more than ever.
So what does this look like practically?
Compassion will disturb your life in three areas: your schedule, your wallet, and your emotions.
Compassion disturbs your schedule.
True compassion interrupts your routine, your calendar, and your comfort zone. It’s stopping to help the person pulled over on the side of the road, even though you have somewhere to be. It’s engaging the person who needs to talk for a few minutes, even though you’re late to your next meeting. I’m not saying this is feasible or practical all the time, but compassion will definitely disturb your schedule.
Compassion disturbs your wallet.
Being compassionate means getting involved financially. Sometimes, it requires giving real dollars. It could be giving money away that you had been saving for your next vacation or shifting your budget to intentionally give to a specific person or cause. But other times, compassion is simply doing something less “valuable” with your time (in the business world, we call this opportunity cost).
Compassion disturbs your emotions.
Have you ever heard someone say, “You’ve been cursed with a good heart”? The idea is that because you care, you do more and give more than the average person. Compassion is being willing to have a broken heart; it’s being willing to have your emotional state disturbed to comfort and encourage another person.
We have a new ministry at our church called the Stephen Ministry that is dedicated to this kind of compassion. Members of our church can be trained to be Stephen Ministers who meet with individuals to listen, care, encourage, and support them. This is compassion in action.
Our world is divided, and people are hurting.
Today, I encourage you to choose compassion over comfort and have a willingness to be disturbed.
