[This is a two-part series. In the second part I’ll focus on How to Teach Compassion to Your Children.]

“When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” – Matthew 14:14 (Emphasis added)

In this verse and several others, Jesus SEES people, has compassion on them, and then begins doing something about the brokenness that he sees, the brokenness that moves him to compassion.

If we are to cultivate the kind of compassion that we see in Jesus, we have to open our eyes, to see, to notice, to recognize the hurting and broken people around us.

This habit goes against the grain of our culture and perhaps even our human nature. We look away.

For example: Our city neighborhoods are often divided by economics (among other things), and so it follows that our schools are divided by economics. Even more so, our suburbs are economic divisions in themselves, broken down into smaller economically-based “subdivisions.” These divisions created for comfort and security also insulate us from becoming the people God created us to be. They create environments where we could live our entire lives and never see or know someone who is any poorer or rougher than us by any significant degree.

Living in a safe neighborhood with nice houses and great schools may not be opposed to the Way of Jesus – but it does create additional hurdles in that journey. It insulates us from seeing broken and hurting people. It insulates us from knowing them – their names, and their stories. It insulates us from the kind of seeing that leads to compassion. It is hard for us to care about people we don’t see and people we don’t know.

If we are to become people of Jesus-like compassion we need to see hurting and broken people. We need to move towards them, spend time with them, and become friends with them the way that Jesus did.

It may take more intentionality and effort in some places to do the kind of seeing that leads to compassion, but the opportunities are there. They are under bridges and behind bushes, they are in trailer parks and nursing homes, they are in almost every wing of the hospital, they are in courthouses, and in boys and girls homes.

Opportunities to grow in compassion are all around us – if we will only take the time to see the way Jesus does.