Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Col. 3:12
Dear Lord Jesus, the gospel should be all the motivation I need to live as a compassionate, kind, humble, gentle, patient man. For this is how you relate to us 24/7—in full view of our ill-deserving ways and multilayered needs. We’ll never experience you as insensitive, unkind, proud, harsh, or impatient. Indeed, through the gospel, we’ve become members of God’s chosen, holy, dearly loved people. O, blessed status and standing in grace…
Yet, at times it does take more than the Scriptures for compassion to be my spontaneous response in the face of suffering; sometimes it takes my own experience of pain. This has been just such a week. An old back injury flared up briefly, and for a day it would have been easier to cloth myself with compassion than with cotton. Thankfully, my discomfort was “light and momentary,” but the discomfort has ramped up my praying today for chronic sufferers—those who daily cry is, “How long, O Lord?” There are so many people I know who have better reasons and more tears to ask that question than me.
Jesus, I pray for people with unrelenting pain in their bodies—those who no longer get any relief from physical therapy or medication. The temptation to find alternative ways—destructive ways to deal with their pain is unrelenting. By the power of the Holy Spirit, please bring relief, for your name sake and glory.
I pray for people with emotional and mental diseases, who live in the cruel world of delusional thinking, forsaken memories and sabotaging emotions. Having watched my own dad change and disappear through dementia has heightened my awareness of the toll this disease takes on families and caregivers.
And as both my wife and I are survivors of childhood sexual abuse, I pray for those who are just beginning to voice their own stories; for those who are stuck, traumatized and triggered by their abuse wounds; for those who see more of their shame in the mirror than their own faces. Bring your tender mercies and tear wiping hand to bear, Lord Jesus. Bring more than relief, bring hope.
Jesus, I pray for the unconscionable number of children in the world who are suffering from hunger and malnutrition, and for their parents who feel both shame and helplessness. Surely, all of us can be more engaged and generous in helping the poor—those in our communities and across the world. Our throw-a-ways would be their mainstays.
Jesus, I also pray for the worst chronic suffering of all: for those who are “separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). Come, Holy Spirit, come, and apply the saving benefits of Jesus to the religious and the nonreligious alike—to those who may be in the church or in the culture, but who are not yet in Christ. With whom would you have us share the gospel this very day, Lord?
Jesus, I’m already over this brief bout with back pain, but I don’t want to get over compassionate feeling, praying and living. So very Amen I pray, in your kind and ever-so-caring name.