Image by kygp via Flickr
But empathy may very well be our best emotion — it is that fiery thing that welds all our brokenness into something resembling community. It’s the rope that binds us together.
Empathy makes us dig for weeks in the rubble for that one lost soul. Empathy compels us to design the artificial limbs so that the double-amputee can walk again. Empathy mandates that we clean out that extra bedroom and offer it to the refugee, for as long as they need it. Empathy knocks us to our knees when the neighbor’s child is found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Empathy gives us the courage to clean the bedsores of the man crippled for ten years now after that awful fall from his horse. Empathy makes us get up on cold winter mornings to serve biscuits and hot coffee to those who slept fitfully on frozen ground. Empathy enables us to say to the couple with cancer — “I am praying for you. I’ll be by Tuesday to clean your house and mow your lawn so you can take Sadie to the zoo.”
As Lord Tennyson once advised: ” I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.”
Quote from Karen Spears Zacharias
