What’s That Gonna Cost Me?
“Compassion that is redemptive will cost us something.”
That’s a line from last evening’s lesson in our official United Methodist Bible Study, DISCIPLE 2. This week’s lesson was on Compassion.
The recurring theme was how God’s compassion towards ancient Israel shaped the nation’s relationship with each other and with neighbors.
And if the Church is the New Israel…well then…“Compassion that is redemptive will cost us something.”
If our comfortable compassion doesn’t cost us something, it’s not redemptive.
Christ’s redemptive compassion cost him His life.
What does ours cost us?
“Compassion that is redemptive will cost us something.”
joescheets 
I have always given compassion expecting nothing in return. In regards to the compassion I give my friend, who cares for her mother with dementia/Alzheimer’s, usually is a gift of my time. Time is a funny thing, often, it is a space where I would be doing nothing at all. So, giving her respite or taking them to the market during those times, is only time. I have given up things she knows nothing about to give her opportunities she would otherwise not have (her sister gives her little respite, like one day and a half weekend each August). It is then I lose an opportunity I may never get back, but the cost is minimal to the time with someone who is a representative, and speaks from, a place I will never appreciate but only through her relation of it. Or, the opportunity to watch her daughter push her through the store in the wheel chair with a basket on it, with her occasional, “Weeeeee!!” Priceless! (As the commercial says!)
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