Compassion.

Ima Nouri was a 35 year old mother of a very sick child in Iraq. A child that was very unlikely to live, and a child that if he were to live, would live crippled. Her message to the American women was 

Ask them to please try to help us protect them and take care of them. I want them to feel what I am feeling.

Compassion in the words of Michael Nagler means:

"literally suffering with others, feeling what they are feeling. Of course it hurts, but isn't it better to    suffer with others and expand, than to wall off our humanity from them and die within?"

WOAH. Is there something we might be missing here?

In the same way, Jesus calls us to "take up our cross and follow Him" but all too often we don't. We don't because we're scared, we don't because we think we're alone, we don't because it's uncomfortable, and we don't because sometimes...it's just way too darn painful. And God calls us to this compassion. To "carry each other's burdens" and to throw off everything...all the cares of the world, all the hurt, all the abandonment, and even all the sin in our lives-and FOLLOW HIM! So this scary whisper that's slowly turning to a yell for Caroline and I to go to Uganda...that is all the Lord. And day by day as I pray and grow God is just teaching me how important it is to love others. And how that's all he really calls us to do, anyway.

We cannot end the war, eradicate poverty, and make anyone's suffering go away. But we can love them fully and entirely with every ounce of our soul. And that is how people see Him. That is how I first saw Him...and when I strayed from Him...that's how I found Him again. And all safe and snuggled up in my Daddy's arms is really the only place for me to go. Except for Africa...going there, too :)

Man, my God is good. And man...am I undeserving.