Dear chil­dren, let us not love with words or speech but with ac­tions and in truth (1 John 3:18).

Je­sus com­mands that we love one an­oth­er in the same man­ner that he loved us and re­veals that the high­est ex­pres­sion of love is to lay down one’s life for one’s friend (John 15:12-13).

Paul urges us to em­brace the same mind­set as Christ in our re­la­tion­ships while high­light­ing that Christ gave up his di­vine of­fice to be­come a man and then hum­bled him­self fur­ther by of­fer­ing him­self as the eter­nal sac­ri­fice for man’s re­demp­tion on Cal­vary’s cross (Philip­pi­ans 2).

These two are both de­scrib­ing com­pas­sion­ate ser­vice. This is when we in­ter­rupt our lives to in­ter­vene for our neigh­bour’s ben­e­fit. Sym­pa­thy, though good, is not al­ways suf­fi­cient; want­i­ng to make a dif­fer­ence takes ser­vice to an­oth­er lev­el.

Com­pas­sion is the pow­er that dri­ves ser­vice. It is God who works in us and gives us the de­sire and the abil­i­ty to do what pleas­es him (Philip­pi­ans 2:13). Our ser­vice is a rec­on­cil­ia­to­ry man­i­fes­ta­tion of God’s love, mer­cy, and re­demp­tion.

There­fore, what­ev­er we do in word or deed, let us do all in the name of the Lord Je­sus, giv­ing thanks to God the Fa­ther through him (Colos­sians 3:17).

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ad­vis­ing her Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment to em­ploy com­pas­sion when she urged them to per­form in the best in­ter­est of T&T and serve every cit­i­zen.

In his para­ble about the good Samar­i­tan in Luke chap­ter 10, Je­sus fo­cused the spot­light on three in­di­vid­u­als and their re­ac­tions to an en­counter with a bad­ly wound­ed rob­bery vic­tim. Two of them, a priest and a Levite, who by virtue of their of­fice should have done more, up­on see­ing him, passed by on the oth­er side.

How­ev­er, when an un­her­ald­ed Samar­i­tan came up­on that un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion, he not on­ly em­pathised but em­braced the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of nurs­ing the vic­tim back to health. Com­pas­sion took ser­vice to an­oth­er lev­el and came up with a plan to al­le­vi­ate the vic­tim’s dis­tress.

Je­sus made cru­cial in­ter­ven­tions to ad­dress needs with­in his en­vi­ron­ment when he fed the mul­ti­tudes with bread and fish, cast out evil spir­its with his word, and healed all who were in­firm.

We re­mem­ber his vis­it to Bethany, where his friend Lazarus had died and was buried. There, he wept when he wit­nessed the grief and hope­less­ness that Lazarus’ fam­i­ly and friends ex­pe­ri­enced, and though he had been dead for four days, Je­sus’ com­pas­sion caused Lazarus to be mirac­u­lous­ly raised from the dead.

Je­sus sat where we sit and ex­pe­ri­enced what we ex­pe­ri­ence, and this in­ti­mate un­der­stand­ing of hu­man chal­lenges qual­i­fies him to be a mer­ci­ful and faith­ful high priest in things per­tain­ing to God, to make pro­pi­ti­a­tion for the sins of the peo­ple (He­brews 2:17).

Too of­ten, God shows us needs that ex­ist and so­lu­tions re­quired to ad­dress them, but we lack com­pas­sion.

Mere words will not suf­fice; we need en­gage­ment. Let us va­cate the com­fort zones of spec­ta­tor­ship and, with God’s help, be­come par­tic­i­pa­to­ry agents of trans­for­ma­tion with­in our com­mu­ni­ties.