From Psychology Today, person to person, “empathy is the ability to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings of another ... Developing empathy is crucial for establishing relationships and behaving compassionately. It involves experiencing another person’s point of view, rather than just one’s own, and enables pro-social, or helping behaviors, that come from within, rather than being forced.” Webster adds to those thoughts with noting the ability to be empathetic comes “without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.” Another statement that caught my attention said, “The ethic of empathy is the Golden Rule: do onto others, as you would have them do to you.” That made a lot of sense, and it brings us to the biblical command to love others which is joined with the command to love God intensely, passionately, dependently, and with our choices.
I shared with a friend the grief my own heart was heavy with. She had been praying since I had made her aware of the crushing health needs of the one who eventually succumbed to those needs. And she had prayed even while she coped with health needs that were much closer to home for her. She understood the pain another was suffering. She understood the difficulty of giving and giving in the darkness of a very uncertain future. She also knew the reality of her ever-present God, the One who carries us when just to walk demands a strength we know nothing of. And she was able to give from her own pain to lighten the pain of another, both mine, and the family of one who had died too young.
Umbrella Ministries defines itself as a support ministry reaching out to the hurts and hearts of mothers who have experienced the loss of a child. How are we able to do that? 2 Corinthians 1:3,4 answers the question. All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. Like my friend, the mothers of Umbrella Ministries share a very tragic need, but they have also found that Jesus’ Father is our Father too, and He is the Father who gives with understanding, compassion, and comfort. Many of the moms of Umbrella Ministries have and continue to have, a very deep, experiential knowledge of the comforting compassion of our Father. And, yes, it takes empathy to unimaginable levels sometimes when the grief of another becomes our own grief, not in the exact same way as the one who has recently lost, but still in a very sharing, responsive way.
And God calls all of us to a similar empathy – to truly feel the hurts, pains, struggles and difficulties of another, especially in those areas in which we have a story, a history, even a present time of still walking through, that bears a strong resemblance to the other who is hurting. We can do it in all kinds of ways, but giving our presence when needed, dominates. We can assure another of our prayers, help with meals, or housework, or child care, be a listening ear, give comforting, encouraging words, and sometimes even challenging words. But whatever we “do,” it flows from a heart that has known the comfort of our Father, and a compulsion that can do no less than respond to another.
– Bev
(Related Bible reading: 2 Corinthians 1:3,4)
