Adventure of Compassion

Do you have compassion? Are you compassionate towards others: your family, friends, strangers on the street? Our church is doing a series entitled Adventure of Compassion and while I've always considered myself to be compassionate I now find myself lacking. Pastor Jim explained how compassion is composed of 3 parts: seeing, feeling and acting.... I never included the acting part. I have no problem seeing compassion and often feel overwhelmed by how much I feel when I see someone hurting, needing or longing for something more. But I fall short in acting - in part I think its because I'm so overwhelmed by the vast amount of need and then because I don't know where to begin to help.

But I want to make a difference, I need to make a difference....and through our Adventure of Compassion I'm beginning to see the many ways that I'm able too. God is opening doors and windows that I never thought were attainable. Missions trips, volunteer opprotunities at Cornerstone Among Women and cultivating relationshiops through Life Groups are just a few of the paths in front of me! And while I love life groups and am looking for a way to help women in need I'm most excited about the possibility of going to El Salvador to serve on a missions trip.

And one of the reasons I'm looking forward to El Salvador (if I get picked to go) is to interact with the children. My heart aches for children in need and especially for the orphaned child. Current statistics estimate 200 million orphans worldwide... 70 - 80 million of those orphans being in Africa. So my heart is calling me to Africa and while Matt and I can't adopt them all, if we can change the life for one orphan, follow through with each step of compassion, then I think we made our difference.

While our next adoption adventure is somewhere in the future, I feel that God is using the Adventure of Compassion to ready our hearts for things to come..... what about you? Are you feeling compassion; compassion for your family, friends, strangers, God? Because God is our true representation of compassion. And I'm using this adventure of compassion to draw me closer to God, closer to others and closer to myself.




And one of God's biggest gifts of compassion that He gave to me and Matt....

Love & Blessings, Meredith