Ordinary Time 
Pause
“Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it's like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, 1973
We serve a God who knows what it’s like to walk in our shoes. We follow Christ, who looks at us with compassion and says, “Go in peace.” And, we find joy in the embrace of God’s Spirit.
Will you accept God’s compassion for you? Will you share such compassion with those around you?
Pause. Breathe. Soak it in. God’s compassion is yours. Today and every day.
Listen
At that very moment, Jesus recognized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”
His disciples said to him, “Don’t you see the crowd pressing against you? Yet you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” But Jesus looked around carefully to see who had done it.
The woman, full of fear and trembling, came forward. Knowing what had happened to her, she fell down in front of Jesus and told him the whole truth. He responded, “Daughter, your faith has healed you; go in peace, healed from your disease.”
Mark 5:30-34
Think
Do you ever wonder if anyone sees you? If one single person nearby can feel what it’s like to be you? Or do you wonder sometimes if you just get lost in the crowd?
We all have pain. Some feel it more acutely than others. Some people’s pain is visible, while others’ is hidden deep inside them. Walking through life can often feel like the slow push through a crowd, just hoping someone will notice you and have compassion for you.
When a woman riddled with disease silently walked through a swarm of people, barely touching the hem of Jesus’ cloak, he did more than just notice her. The woman’s touch stopped him in his tracks, and for that moment, he felt her pain, he saw her, and he took away her pain.
If Jesus could feel such life-altering compassion for a single person amidst a crowd who barely touched him, he surely sees you and me. If we lay our pain at Jesus’ feet, he will look at us, too, and speak, “Go in peace.”
Emily Holladay
Pray
Gracious God, thank you for coming in the form of human, to feel what it’s like to walk in my shoes. Help me to remember that I am not alone and that you see me, too. Amen.
Go
What would happen if you believed God’s compassion is deep enough and wide enough for you? Would you accept it? Would you share it?
Go today, confident in this: The God who made you came to Earth to walk in your shoes, that you might know the overwhelming peace and joy made just for you.
What are you waiting for? Go! Share this wonderful news!
