The Alpha of Compassion

UV 2958/10000 The Alpha of Compassion
In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer.
Isaiah 54 v 8

But for the compassion of the Lord Jesus, we would have perished in our affliction. It is His great compassion that He extends His mercy to us. He loves to redeem the souls that He had made. It is true that we need to fear the lion-like anger of the Lord but His default mode is not anger but gentleness, kindness, mercy. Sometimes, when we displease Him with our ways, He may withdraw His face from us for a time but when we call to Him for mercy, He rushes to wrap us in His compassionate embrace. His kindness and love for us is not transitory or peremptory but everlasting and consistent.

It takes a whole lifetime to experience the full gamut of the Lord’s mercies towards us. As we gain an understanding and insight into His compassion, our own character and temperament gets transformed into a likeness of His. We will be able to deal with our own anger, resentment and bitterness towards our fellow beings more effectively. We too will begin to look at others with the eyes of compassion of Jesus. When Jesus saw people overburdened with afflictions, He was moved with compassion and He acted to heal them, to deliver them. When He saw a person burdened with guilt at his or her past, He forgave them freely, without imposing any condition. When Jesus saw the multitude following Him hungry, He was moved with compassion and He asked His disciples to find some food to feed them. When the food was insufficient to feed so many, He prayed and multiplied it to feed the multitude. Many of the miracles of Jesus when studied in context were not to prove that He is the Son of God but were the result of the deep compassion He felt in certain situations.

The uni-verse is a personal promise of the Lord to be ever compassionate to us. It is a guarantee that we will find mercy in the Lord whatever be our past , whatever be the folly or vile thing that we had done. We need to experience the compassion of the Lord in every aspect of our lives so that we extend the same kindness to others who have erred wantonly or unwittingly against us or against our own sense of right and wrong or of propriety. We ought not to keep a record of wrongs against others but release them with a spirit of compassion and kindness.