It’s About God: The “Who” Precedes The “What”Sýnishorn

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The compassionate heart of a Father

God is compassionate and caring. We may incorrectly think of Him more as a cruel taskmaster, but in truth, He is compassionate and caring. We imagine that if we follow His will, He is going to be a slave driver, demanding of us, “Go more. Do more. Be more. Give more.” But God sees and hears the cries of His people. He cares for them. At the time when God appears to Moses in the burning bush, the Israelites have been in slavery for 400 years. Four hundred years! That means a child was born into slavery, lived in slavery and died in slavery. And so did his child. And his grandchild. And his great-grandchild! None of them were rescued. None of them were set free. But God saw, heard and had compassion on His people.

If you imagine God as mercilessly demanding, then your picture of the Father is distorted and needs adjusting. He has great compassion on us. He has compassion on our lusts. Compassion on our addictions. Compassion on our secret thoughts. Compassion on our insecurities. He cares for us. Remarkably, He has compassion on us even with regard to those things He does not approve and did not cause! If we’re honest, we would have to admit that many of the hurts in our lives come about when we decide to ignore God and go our own way. We hope God is not looking, or that He will at least blink and miss our premeditated choice to sin. We rebuff Him and stubbornly make our own way, then end up in a world of hurt. That’s when God says, “I love you. I feel compassion toward you. And I’m coming after you.”

Compassion has been called “a sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with the desire to alleviate it.” God doesn’t just glance our way and say, “Poor schmucks, I feel so sorry for them. I wish I could do something.” No! He sees our struggles with sin and self and circumstances, and He says, “Oh, how I hurt, because My children hurt! I’m going to do something for them, even though they don’t deserve it. And even if they do not ask.”

His compassion on the children of Israel went far beyond feeling or emotion. As V. Raymond Edman states in "The Disciplines of Life," “God’s compassion … is demonstrated by definite acts to testify his covenant with Israel. God’s compassion steps forward into the mess that you and I make of our lives and hugs and loves and rescues us. That’s what God does.”

With the compassionate heart of a father, God offers His love in the midst of difficult times. And He asks us to do the same.

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