Have Compassion
Mark 6:34 When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. (ESV)
The world in which we live is highly competitive: people clamouring for position, for attention, for employment, for promotion, for recognition. Yep, it’s a clamorous, highly competitive world.
Of course, not everyone’s like that. There are a good many people who aren’t all that competitive. But the climate, the culture in which we’re immersed often forces us to be clamorous to get ahead; to walk over others to get to where we think we’re entitled to be.
Add to that our progressive detachment from reality through all the time we spend staring at those tiny, little, glowing screens in our hands, and honestly, we’ve become very transactional in our human relationships. The idea of having compassion on one another has almost gone out the window. Not so for Jesus:
Mark 6:34 When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. (ESV)
Many of the people in that great crowd would be the very same ones who, not all that far down the track, would be crying out “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” And yet Jesus had compassion on them. He recognised them as sheep without a shepherd, as people who’d been led astray by their religious leaders.
I think that the ugliest thing you and I will ever see is a human being without compassion.
Look, other people will from time to time treat you badly. They may even do terrible things to you.
Be like Jesus. Have compassion on them.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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