Topics: Compassion

One of the first followers of the Lord to rediscover the Lord's passion for the poor was St. Francis of Assisi. He was born in 1182, the son of one of the most well-to-do families in Assisi. Occasional incidents in his younger days revealed some intolerance in his heart, but it was on one of those occasions that the seed of his future transformation was planted. One day while working intently in his father's cloth shop arranging the fabric, a beggar came to the door and asked for alms in God's name. Francis rudely kicked the man out, but at once he regretted his actions and followed the man to offer his apologies. This event replayed in his mind over and over again.

Later on in his life, during a brief stay in Rome, he took out his money, took off his garments, and gave them all to the poor. On another occasion he encountered a leper in Assisi and, instead of fleeing as most villagers did, he went up to him and embraced him. He did all this despite the scorn of his friends and his father's great disappointment. His steps before him were ordered; that leper represented Christ Himself! So Francis renounced his father's possessions and went on to work among the poor and leprous people of his time.

Here are the oft-quoted words of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;

Where there is hatred, let me sow charity;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is error, the truth;

Where there is doubt, the faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light; and

Where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master,

Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love;

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.

As noted earlier, Madame Guyon was one of the most outstanding spiritual writers of the 1600s. She was known for her deep spiritual perception and for her pursuit of union with God. Besides her spiritual writings, she also was known for her compassion for the poor and deprived. Read her own words from her autobiography:

"In acts of charity I was assiduous. So great was my tenderness for the poor, that I wished to supply all their wants. I could not see their necessity, without reproaching myself for the plenty I enjoyed. I deprived myself of all I could to help them. The best at my table was distributed among them. Being refused by others, they all came to me.

"God used me to reclaim several from their disorderly lives. I went to visit the sick, to comfort them, to make their beds. I made ointments, dressed their wounds, buried their dead. I furnished tradesmen and mechanics wherewith to keep their shops. My heart was much opened toward my fellow-creatures in distress."

In the late 1600s and 1700s the Pietistic Movement swept across Eastern Europe and eventually touched the eastern shores of North America. This was a reform movement predominantly within the Lutheran church.

One of its central figures, August Francke, insisted that they place greater value on a "drop of true love more than a sea of knowledge." On the foundation of this movement the Quakers in the 1800s caught the passion of Jesus for the poor and the marginalized of society. They insisted that the quiet inward life become inevitably associated with its active outward expression in the world of affairs. And so it was.

Elizabeth Fry rose above her own natural fears and invaded the women's section of the Newgate Prison in London in the early 1800s. She succeeded in changing the lives of the "savage, and drunken, unruly women."

The Quakers were the first to reach out to the mentally ill. Instead of treating them as animals, they established a retreat for them. There these compassionate people treated them as guests and removed the typical physical restraints.

Quakers also took a strong stand against slavery. As early as the late 1800s they were lifting their voice up against the degradation of human slavery.

"John Woolman would often decline to accept hospitality in a home where slaves were kept or would insist upon reimbursing slaves for work done for him personally."

"A Mennonite, Peter Plockhoy, issued the first public statement in North America against Slavery in connection with regulations for a colony on the Delaware: 'No lordships or servile slavery shall burden our company.' "

One of the great lights of social reform in the chronicles of history is the British statesman William Wilberforce. Wilberforce would become the key political leader in the abolition of the slave trade. He was a tiny "shrimp" of a man, but he was gigantic in his courage and tenacious in his struggle against a very popular trade. It was a cause that he believed in and to which he dedicated all of his adult life.

William was strongly influenced in his early life by his aunt and uncle who were very much involved in Methodism. He would latter declare to his mother that George Whitefield had put something of a fire in his heart that would remain forever. The Methodist had taught him the importance of getting involved in a cause larger than oneself.

For William the cause would be to forever remove the blight of slavery from the face of British history. The fight would be long and arduous, demanding every ounce of energy his soul possessed. There would be times of failure and deep depression when it seemed that he would never win this war. John Newton, the redeemed ex-slave trader, would be a source of tremendous encouragement for Wilburforce in those times of discouragement.

On the fateful day of February 23, 1807, Wilberforce stepped into the Parlimentary House knowing that this was the day. For more than 40 years William had led the charge against the slave trade. This day would be the climax of a life's work. Sir Andrew Romilly stood up to address the House. Every eye was upon him. In referring to the conquests of Napoleon at that time, he would begin:

" 'And when I compare...those pangs of remorse,' continued Romilly, 'with the feelings of which must accompany my honorable friend [speaking of Wilberforce] from this House to his home, after the vote tonight shall have confirmed the object of his human and unceasing labors; when he retires...to his happy and delightful family, when he lays himself down on his bed, reflecting on the innumerable voices that will be raised in every quarter of the world to bless him, how much more pure and perfect felicity must he enjoy, in the consciousness of having preserved so many millions of his fellow creatures, than-" Romilly could not finish the speech because the whole House erupted in an ovation of honor for Wilberforce. At the end of the day the House passed by a vote of 283 to 6 to abolish the slave trade.

From his deathbed, John Wesley wrote concerning Wilberforce, "I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy, which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you?"

John Wesley himself was one of the first to move outside the confines of the church building and reach out to the poor and destitute. He made this entry in his Journal on Saturday, March 31: "In the evening I reached Bristol, and met Mr. Whitefield there. I could scarce reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me an example on Sunday; having been all my life (until very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church."

John Wesley was actively involved in reaching out to the unemployed. In fact, at the age of 82 he spent whole days walking about to collect money for the poor. George Whitefield, the man who introduced Wesley to field preaching among the poor, maintained an orphanage for the abandoned in the state of Georgia.

Moving into the 1900s, we have many examples of people who abandoned the luxuries of a capitalistic society to embrace the needy of the Third World. No one else stands out more than the late Mother Theresa.

She was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910 in Skopje, Yugoslavia (now Macedonia). In 1928 she decided to become a nun and went to Dublin, Ireland, to join the Sisters of Loreto From there she went to the Loreto convent in Darjeeling, India.

In 1929 she began to teach geography at St. Mary's High School for Girls in Calcutta. In those days the streets of Calcutta were crowded with beggars, lepers, and the homeless. Unwanted infants were regularly abandoned on the streets or in garbage bins. In 1946, Mother Teresa felt the need to abandon her teaching position to care for the needy in the slums of Calcutta. Initially focusing her efforts on poor children in the streets, Mother Teresa taught them how to read and how to care for themselves. Many former students of St. Mary's eventually joined her order. Each girl who joined was required to devote her life to serving the poor without accepting any material reward in return.

In the mid-1950s, Mother Teresa added aid to lepers in her work. The Indian government gave her order 34 acres near the city of Asansol. There she established a leper colony, called Shanti Nagar (Town of Peace). Within a few years her work expanded beyond India, and the Sisters of Charity opened centers throughout the world for lepers, the blind, the disabled, the aged, and the dying, as well as schools and orphanages for the poor. The recipient of various awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, Mother Teresa used all the money that accompanied those awards to fund her centers. By 1990 more than 3,000 nuns belonged to the Missionaries of Charity, operating various centers in 25 different countries.

F.B. Meyer, a Baptist minister, exemplified what welfare at the local church level can do. While at Melbourne Hall, Leicester, in the 1880s, Meyer combined evangelism with social programs. Some of his main thrusts were rehabilitating ex-prisoners and helping people whose lives were being ruined by alcohol. Meyer saw alcohol as the typical cause of crime, but he soon discovered what a difficult time men coming out of prison had in finding jobs. So he set up businesses to employ these men.

"F.B. Meyer - Firewood Merchant" is only one example.

There are a few illustrations in this present time of those who have maintained the Lord's passion for the poor. The YWAM Mercy ships go from port to port throughout the world delivering medical help and food for the poor. The Salvation Army continues to give food and relief to those in the inner cities around the world. Teen Challenge centers have reached out to those whose lives have been destroyed by drugs, alcohol, and other addictions. There are some city-churches that have not abandoned the inner city, but have remained there as a source of relief and strength to those fighting the battle of poverty, unemployment and crime. In spite of these few examples of Christian concern for the poor, the advance of technology in our generation has served only to increase the gap between the confines of the Church and the need in the streets. We preach gospel messages from our safe TV studios to the faceless masses of our nation. We post our "message of hope and concern" over the lines of the Internet, hoping that some lost soul will be "touched."

Now there's an unusual word to use in this American culture of technological evangelism. This is not the same "touch" that we saw in the life of the Master. Can a cyber-touch alleviate the pain and heartache of those trapped in poverty, addictions, and hopeless loneliness?

We nestle down in the comfortable pews of our richly constructed church buildings where we enjoy the security of a safe environ. There we pray for the poor and needy ones in our community. Our prayers are quite fervent, but our actions are anemic. The time has come to break out of our comfortable buildings and places of refuge to once again engage ourselves in the world for whom our Master gave up all the "comfort" and glory of His heavenly dwelling to seek and to save.

May the Lord restore the touch of compassion and power in this day!

Source; Unknown