'To Feel With'

Do other people irritate you? Poor driving, thoughtless comments, and in many other ways, we can feel like others need to 'get their act together' on the parts of them that we don't approve of (we could include 'ending a sentence with a preposition' to the list), or just
grow up or become more wise like us. Now, maybe I could get all Gandhi about it and fast until I stop being irritated; or I could learn there's a different way to think about others. The way Jesus did. 

In the first part of Luke 7, there are back-to-back stories of Jesus miraculously helping people with whom he had no connection and no reason to help, except that he desired to. First, he healed the servant (not even a child) of the Roman centurion; then raised back from the casket the only son of a widow. Everyone around was impressed, saying “A mighty prophet has risen among us” and suchlike. So why did he do these things? One answer is that miracles and signs and wonders like this gave a lot of credibility to what Jesus said. And it's true, people did flock to hear him. But if that is the only reason, then God only does things to benefit himself. There is a deeper reason. 

Verse 13 says "When the Lord saw her, his heart overflowed with compassion." In the Greek, the single word splanchnizomai means 'to have one's bowels moved' because in Greek thought, your guts were the source of emotion (and we know our emotions definitely affect our guts). This word is a powerful one, indicating a profound movement of our Lord's emotions, not a simple wave-of-the-hand decision. He agreed to help the centurion; and he was moved with compassion to help the widow, perhaps knowing that losing her only son would leave her without any means of support in that society. So he acted out of compassion -- the Latin roots mean 'to feel with.' Jesus allowed his emotions to be moved, to 'feel with' the widow and determine to help. 

The centurion wasn't perfect, nor his servant, nor the widow nor her son, and in some ways they doubtless would have irritated me; but Jesus acted out of compassion not irritation, because he came to show us the heart of Father God to be gracious to us. His feelings and actions revealed that God looks at us as brothers and sisters of his son Jesus, connected to him by his adoption of us in grace, not by our actions. 

You and I can learn to think like Jesus. We can surrender to Jesus and let him change the way we think. I can either try hard to avoid irritation, or learn to have my bowels moved and 'feel with' the other person, like Jesus did. Which do you think will work for me? And which will work for you? And which do you think the Lord wants us to do? 

in his grace,