Saturday, April 18, 2015

"The Compassion of Christ"

I saved this link to a draft blog post a month ago, intending to highlight a paragraph and link to the original blog and thus have a neat little citation of an article I appreciated at one point.

Of the many articles I read, I only pick a few that I want to save to this blog. And of those few? I may remember them, sure, but really the exercise is precisely so I *don't* have to remember them but can find them again when the topic is relevant. This blog is supposed to function as my um, external hard drive, I guess.

However, since I often go a month or two before I format the links and actually publish a post, I often do forget why I selected a particular link as "blog worthy" and get to rediscover it when I actually go through my draft posts.

I have thought about the following quote and the original article many times in the last month and it's been really convicting, especially as I parent Isaac. I often have too little patience with him and his over-dramatization of the events in his life.

I need to remember Jesus and His care of His disciples and friends and ask myself:
Can I be a compassionate mother like that?  Can I look into my child’s eyes and tell her not to fuss about dinner, but with the same compassion of one who knows how hard it is to wait? Can I hold them when they have a bad dream, and tell them none of it is real, but with the kindness of someone who knows what it feels like to be afraid?  Or do I dismiss their fears and their worries and their struggles because I know they won’t last long?  Can I find a more compassionate way to exercise my authority and abandon the answer “because I told you so”?  Am I the kind of mother who tells my children to “get over it” because I know that a scratch on their knee isn’t going to kill them?  Or am I the kind of mother who can, like Jesus, compassionately kiss their hurts, understanding that their fears are real to them, and kindly tell them that they will heal?  Can I be kind like Jesus on the stormy waters when He asked His disciples be calm while He gently calmed the waves?  Can I be kind when nobody in the house is being calm?  Can I bring the calm?
[https://fenleyflat.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/the-compassion-of-christ/]

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