Moved with compassion

In a children’s book (written for all of us, really), a mole asks a boy, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And the boy’s answer is just this one word: “Kind” (Charlie Mackesy, “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse”). Not a pilot, or a chef, or a programmer; simply kind. It’s a sweet reminder that maybe what’s most important isn’t so much about what we do, but rather who we are – whatever we happen to be doing.

One expression of kindness that enables change for good is compassion. In Scripture, Jesus is spoken of more than once as being “moved with compassion.” Right afterward, something spiritually significant always happens – something healing, provision-bringing, or transformational.

So why was that?

That God is Love is a central message of the new covenant Christ Jesus gave to the world (see I John 4:8). Christian Science teaches that the love and compassion that Jesus expressed was a reflection of God, divine Love itself. The compassion Jesus radiated was God’s love being expressed through him, enabling him to see spiritually – to see as God sees. The result of that divine Love-based vision was healing.

In one case the Gospel of Mark records a person with leprosy, a skin disease greatly feared at the time, approaching Jesus and asking for his help. As the account goes, “Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed” (Mark 1:41, 42).

Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, explains Jesus’ compassionate healing work this way in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”: “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick” (pp. 476-477).

This “view of man” (which includes all of us) as the spiritual, pure, and flawless reflection of God opens our eyes to the Science of being, the law of divine Love, which is as fully in operation now as it was in Christ Jesus’ time. This brings healing to difficulties of all kinds – physical, mental, situational, relational, anything!

Each of us can learn, understand, and apply the law of Love in our daily lives. After telling the parable of the good Samaritan, illustrating the importance of being compassionate and acting on that compassion, Jesus said to his listeners, “Go, and do thou likewise” (Luke 10:37). It was his expectation that each of us could also know God as Love, be moved with spiritual kindness and compassion as an expression of God’s love, and by so doing, bring blessings and healing to life.

During a challenging situation in a relationship a while ago, I remember feeling as though there was really no good way forward. As I prayed about it, asking God to guide me, the answer that came was simply, “Bless them.” To me this meant to bless this other person by being compassionate, by seeing them through the eyes of God.

Immediately upon hearing and then embracing that inspiration, a way forward came to mind that I had not previously seen. It was going to take a willingness to not cling to hurt feelings, but Love-inspired compassion often requires that kind of shift. I went on a walk and spent the time “blessing” the other person in my thoughts and prayers, asking divine Love to remove those hurt feelings.

I felt that we were both embraced in God’s love, and decided to call this person. Their positive response was immediate, and it was as if all the conflict that had been there never even was. Our relationship moved forward harmoniously.

Genuine compassion and kindness are not personal qualities with an individual origin, but spiritual qualities from God expressed by us. To strive to love in this way, moment by moment, is to express the divine Mind that Christ Jesus did. When we bring Christlike kindness and compassion to light in our lives, good happens; others are blessed, and we are blessed.

What might happen if the job description for each of us today was simply to be kind, to be moved with compassion? Think of the healing blessings that would follow!