Compassion That Never Fails

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.

Lamentations 3:22

Compassion is directly connected to power.

Our human power has limits. For some, compassion can morph into workaholism and exhaustion. Others, looking at the widespread trauma in the world today, feel powerless to help at all. Then compassion becomes despair. Despair becomes avoidance, even as the needs of the world grow greater.

There is a compassion that never fails, and it is powered by limitless love.

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but my compassion has limits because my love has limits. Does yours? I didn’t want my love to have limits. I once thought I could love endlessly. It took a mere six months among a tribe deep in the bush of Africa to relieve me of my illusion.

I guess, truth be told in those green early years of my compassion career, I thought my love was enough to save the world. I thought pretty highly of myself and my ability to give and give and keep giving. I wouldn’t have said that in so many words, but looking back, I see the belief hidden in my naive heart.

The first couple of months were a blur of exciting discovery and fulfillment. I was made for this I thought to myself as I poured out everything I had to serve the poor in the name of Jesus.

In the following months, my language grew and I began to understand what my smiling neighbors were saying to me in response to the cups of chai I poured, the bottomless sugar bowl I kept filling, the eggs I freely gave from chickens who seemed to have a limitless supply.

She doesn’t have a brain!

She’s ugly! Look at her hair!

She’s not a woman! She’s a little girl because she cannot give her husband children! Little girl, little girl!

My revelation of their mockery grew as I learned more language.

Another revelation, a more important one, also grew in me. What I thought was compassion in my heart had really been ignorance. And ignorance, once educated to the ways of human nature, became anger. And self-pity. And self-righteousness. I became anything but compassionate. The people I once did not know beyond their socio-economic status, their geography, their spiritual belief system, and their quaint mud huts were suddenly people. And life was hard for them. They rarely showed compassion to one another and certainly not to me. I wanted to keep loving them, but their harshness and mockery began to wear on me. My love ran out, and so did my own power. I realized I had been loving them in my name more than in Jesus’ name. And in my own strength, I didn’t have what it took.

This was the real beginning of authentic compassion in my life.

When my love ran out and those I served did not love me in return, I began to understand.

It is quite easy, satisfying even, to have compassion for those who admire you, show you gratitude, and call you good.

The world increasingly mocks God and does not call Him good. Yet it is because of His great love that we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail.

My compassion failed. Has yours? 

25 years ago in a remote village in Africa, I finally pulled the plug on my human power and began the daily discipline of plugging into God’s limitless love. And it is a discipline, even after all this time.

We do not have the capacity as humans to save the world. We don’t have unlimited power on our own. Our bodies have limits, our minds have limits, and our hearts have limits. We exist for now in the confines of time and space. And therefore so does our human compassion.

But there is a compassion available to us that never fails, and it is powered by limitless love. It comes from God, and He invites us to depend on Him as our source of compassion for a wounded world.

As we rely upon God for the compassion our own hearts need, we will become a power source of compassion for those around us. His love and compassion surge into our hearts and through our hearts, out to the orphaned child, the displaced refugee, the prodigal, the homeless, the mourning, the broken. It makes the self-pitying self-forgetful. It empowers the exhausted to rise and prepare a meal for the unexpected. It brings deep, belly-shaking joy as the sorrowful laugh with delight at the discovery of power far beyond their limits.

There is a #compassion that never fails, and it is powered by limitless love. Don’t be consumed, dear one, by the world's pain. Rely today on the One whose compassions never fail. Share on X

Lord, thank You for showing me compassion that never fails because of your unlimited love. Make me Your power cord to a hurting world. Amen.

@audreycfrank

Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash