Compassion

Someone wrote with admiration that even as I’m engaged in my own struggle with cancer, I can think about the needs of others. That’s not exactly a marvel. The terrible truth is that until I experienced illness and suffering myself, I was almost totally empty of compassion for others. I know plenty of healthy people who are filled with compassion and empathy, and I admire them. But I was not. When I say that cancer has been good for me, I mean it in many ways, including morally. It has done me good. Yesterday’s reading in Streams in the Desert said it better than I can.

“Sorrow reveals unknown depths of the soul, and unknown capacities for suffering and service. Lighthearted, frivolous people are always shallow and are never aware of their own meagerness or lack of depth. Sorrow is God’s tool to plow the depths of the soul, that it may yield richer harvests. …Many people…casually live on the outer edge of their own souls until great thunderstorms of sorrow reveal hidden depths within, which were never before known or suspected.”

Then there’s a poem by Maltbie D. Babcock:

The dark brown soil is turned
By the sharp-pointed plow;
And I’ve a lesson learned.

My life is but a field,
Stretched out beneath God’s sky;
Some harvest rich to yield.

Where grows the golden grain?
Where faith? Where sympathy?
In a furrow cut by pain.

So I don’t want any longer to “casually live on the outer edge of my soul.” I also don’t want to live even part of one day thinly, meagerly, unthinking. Life is too precious. People are too precious. And I'm still way too self-centered.

I’m so thankful to be alive, and to feel well enough to keep active and be with people. God is good, after all these unfeeling years, to begin to teach me compassion!

Blessings,
Carol