Compassion for the Least of These
by Beth Brewer
I love my job! Not everyone can say that I know. But I feel blessed to say that I get the opportunity to experience God’s working in and through me every time I leave my house to head to work. I might be going into the hospital to work as a nurse in our labor and delivery unit or meeting a new mom in her home to help her with feeding her baby as a lactation consultant. Wherever God sends me, I am always aware of His presence and know that He is using me to meet a need for the women He places in front of me.
I haven’t always enjoyed working with women. To be honest, there was a time I felt like women’s ministry was the furthest thing from an ideal place to serve. I felt like women were difficult, hard to please, whiny, and just selfish at times. I now realize that this can describe all of us and I feel a bit embarrassed that I would see the “speck” in another women’s eye when the “plank” was so large in my own. As I’ve grown in my relationship with the Lord and followed His lead in my life, I have grown to have a greater compassion for women and see it as an amazing honor to help women in such an impressionable time of their lives. I may not be working directly in a church filling a staff position in ministry, but I view my job in the secular world as a role in ministry that can have a great impact for the Kingdom.
Being a labor and delivery nurse is not a job for the faint of heart. It can entail long shifts that are physical and emotional, but joyous at the same time. It is an awesome thing to be a part of bringing new life into the world. However, when that life is starting under difficult circumstances and immense struggles, part of this job can be very disheartening. Not every mom comes into the hospital having planned for her new baby. Not every mom has her nursery ready at home and her loving, supportive husband at her side to welcome her little one into the world. Many moms, unfortunately, aren’t even in a place where they are able to care for themselves well, let alone care for their baby fully and safely. They might be living in extreme poverty, dealing with drug/alcohol addiction, serving jail time, and maybe choosing to give their babies up for adoption or not allowed to keep their babies. It is easy for me to put on critical glasses at this point and view these women from a judgmental angle. But these are the women that need the most compassion and need to know that they are loved and accepted by me and their Creator. I strive to treat them no differently than anyone else. I want to love on them in a way that they know they matter, that they feel respected and seen, not judged.
Jesus demonstrated this way of showing compassion time and time again in his interactions with the people that he encountered. He purposely walked into the lives of “the worst of sinners” to show us how we should interact with the people in our lives. The first story that comes to mind for me was Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well. He purposely took the unpopular route through Samaria to find this woman and share His love and grace with her. She was looked down upon by all the people around her because of the lifestyle and poor choices she had made. She was living in the middle of her sin when Jesus found her and her life was changed forever because Jesus showed her respect, spoke His truth and grace into her life and gave her hope in the midst of her hopeless circumstances. The Bible tells us that even more people in her Samaritan village came to believe in Jesus because she shared what He said and did in her life.
God wants to use us today to speak life and hope into the lives of the people we encounter. We need to pray for our hearts to be filled with compassion like His. We need to ask Him for opportunities to meet people who need to hear His good news. We need to spend time with the Father so that our hearts overflow with His love in a way that we naturally love and encourage anyone who crosses our path. Our world is lost, and the only source of true hope and salvation is found in Christ Jesus! May we live our lives in such a way that those around us experience greater compassion and are drawn to the Father through our love towards them.
“A new command I give you, love one another.” John 13:34
“No one has ever seen God; But if we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is made complete in us.” 1 John 4:12
