One of the biggest trends of social media is the issue of public shaming. On one particular Facebook page from my home town, someone posted a picture of a vehicle, license plate and all. The person who posted it included a the story of seeing them throw out a cigarette butt off to the side of the road. With the issue of wildfires and such, I can see how this would be upsetting. This picture stirred up a lot of controversy as to whether using social media to “shame” people into changing was really appropriate. We may think this is something new, but this kind of shaming has been happening for a long time.
I was once on a road trip with some pastors when we stopped for some coffee in a small rural Alberta town. Inside, we saw a notice they displayed of a person who had written a bad cheque to their business. The waitress shared the story of how this person had cheated them and was no longer welcome in their establishment until the bill was paid and that by posting the cheque with all his personal information on it, they wanted to tell all their patrons about this person. One of my colleagues told her to take down the notice, took out his wallet and paid the man’s debt.He told her to tell the man his debt was paid – in full!The waitress was astounded.
How many of us would have done that? We know, of course, that we are supposed to be compassionate people, but sometimes we don’t know exactly how to do it. I believe God’s question to us today is, “What are we going to DO about it?” We know that expressing kindness and compassion are Christian virtues, but how is that lived out in this culture?
In Mark 6:30-44, we find the story of the feeding of the 5000.Here we find a group of people (many commentators suggest the number was around 10 000) who were following Jesus. It was late in the day and they needed food. Using a boy’s small lunch, Jesus performs an amazing miracle and the needs of each person were met with leftovers for later! How does the example of feeding the 5000 help us to understand what compassion is?
I believe there are many lessons this passage can teach us. I want to look at a few of them and see how we too can be a people whose compassion shines.
The first thing we learn here is that compassion involves commitment. When you look at the life of Christ, you see a man who was compassionate. He not only empathized with people’s situations,
He went out of His way to help. In order to develop a ministry of compassion, we must decide in advance to be compassionate.
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