The power of compassion

Are you, or is someone you know, in need of healing? To be a reliable help to another, we need compassion. This is not mere sympathetic pity, which can mire us in the problem. It is also not just feeling another’s suffering empathetically, which is often sparked by love but, being rooted in human affection, cannot in and of itself heal. It takes something more than concern, pity, or even empathy to destroy suffering and bring about healing results. In its deepest, spiritual meaning, compassion is a power based on God, divine Love. It moved Jesus to act and resulted in healing myriad sicknesses, raising the dead, and destroying sin.

Although Jesus is no longer physically present, this power of the compassion he expressed is always available, moving many to act from the same basis Jesus did and with similar healing results. Mary Baker Eddy discovered that there is a law of God that undergirded Jesus’ healing ministry. She named this law Christian Science because it can be learned and proved by anyone. The theology and practice of Christian Science include this compassion and result in healing the sick the way Jesus healed—through God’s power alone. We read in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mrs. Eddy, “Love for God and man is the true incentive in both healing and teaching” (p. 454).

Our desire to express compassion is a good place to start. Then, step by step, trusting God’s leading, we find that Christly compassion motivates us, as it did Jesus, to strive to see ourselves and others as God sees us—as the spiritual, perfect, healthy manifestation of Deity, having no element of matter or mortality. And we become more willing to give up even long-held beliefs and yield to the radically new view of everyone as spiritual.