Misfit designs and clashing colors excluded these clothes from the sales-rack at the second-hand clothing store. It would seem that even for the poor, these clothes were sub-standard. Heaped on the warehouse floor, they’d been relegated to fill trash bags and sold in bulk for a quarter a bag. As part of a service project with our youth, intending to teach compassion for the poor, I stuffed dozens of trash bags with these odd looking clothes.

As we were finishing up, a rusted-out Cavalier with a cracked windshield sputtered and choked into the parking lot.

Through her missing teeth, a leathery-faced woman smiled and asked us to load thirty of our black bags into her back seat. She looked on with an exuberance that confused me. What was it about these black bags that made them like black pearls for her? As I pushed with all my weight to squeeze the last of the bags into her car, I decided to ask her. She told me of all the people in her trailer park who did not have money to buy clothes. She had very little money, but they had even less. The clothes she was buying were not just for her, but for all her neighbors.

That’s when it hit me that there is a difference between sympathy and compassion. Stuffing trash bags with odd-looking clothing made me aware of how blessed I am and how little others have. It made me feel pained for them, sympathetic, by making me recognized the great separation between us. This woman’s compassion on the other hand had engaged her in the suffering of real people. This is what compassion means--to enter into and suffer with others. Compassion therefore brings people together through the willing embrace of another’s hardship. The poor for this woman were not an objectified class of people she felt sorry for; they are her neighbors and friends. She knows and relates to them personally with the compassion of a loving heart and open hands.

This has always amazed me about God and is one primary reason I follow Jesus. God, in all his glory and might, is not above being personally and lovingly interested in what happens to each of us. Jesus’ person, life, and death on the cross expresses God’s great love and compassion for us. Hands dirtied with our sin and suffering do not inhibit his compassion. On the contrary, his compassion willingly identifies with us, where we are, even at the cost of his own life. In so doing, God’s sympathy takes on the flesh of a true compassion that creates new life in us.

Such compassion is hard for many of us to grasp. We feel a bit like Jesus’ disciple Thomas who doubted until he personally saw the nail-scarred hands of the resurrected Jesus. The good news is that even in our doubt, Jesus’ compassion meets us where we are. Seeing that woman’s compassion for her neighbors reminds me of the kind of compassion Jesus has personally shown toward me and calls me to show toward others. It reminds me that Jesus grasps and empowers my life with nail-pierced hands. That makes all the difference in the world. That makes Jesus’ grasp, and hopefully my life, compassionate. With compassionate hands open, Jesus asks us, "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. See the nail-scars in my hands. Live in my compassionate grasp and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest and to live freely and lightly."

In Jesus' Grasp,

Mark