People change when they hurt enough they have to change, they learn enough they want to change, or they receive enough they are able to change.
Compassion
David Platt
We don’t have to ask what the will of God is; he has made it clear. He wants his people to provide for the poor, to value the unborn, to care for orphans and widows, to rescue people from slavery, to defend marriage, to war against sexual immorality in all its forms in every area of our lives, to love our neighbors as ourselves regardless of their ethnicity, to practice faith regardless of the risk, and to proclaim the gospel to all nations. Of these things we are sure.
Chris Summerlin
As you observe is going on in your community and nation, it’s easy to become frustrated or even angry. Does our love for our fellow brothers and sisters (regardless of race, colour, sex, or creed) rise to the top and overtake our emotions? Love is a choice and I choose Love! 1 Corinthians 13. Is this love demonstrated through you to your community, city, state, nation, and world just as much (if not more!) and not just toward your church and personal relationships? [paraphrased]
Henri J.M. Nouwen
We become neighbors when we are willing to cross the road for one another. (…) There is a lot of road crossing to do. We are all very busy in our own circles. We have our own people to go to and our own affairs to take care of. But if we could cross the road once in a while and pay attention to what is happening on the other side, we might indeed become neighbors.
Brian D. McLaren
To be truly good means more than not robbing people. To be truly good means more than being righteously religious, to be truly good means being a good neighbor. And to be a good neighbor means recognizing that there are ultimately no strangers. Everybody is my neighbor! Everybody is my brother! There are no isolated wounded on the other side of the street! We’re all connected.
Kevin Dedmon
Followers of Jesus don’t have to live in fear because we have access to perfect love, and our future is secure in Him. Say no to fear, live free, and reach out to everyone with a message of hope, even if you have to do it from 6 feet away. God’s presence and powerful breath of life can find a way through their mask.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don’t do, and more in light of what they suffer.
John Wesley
Do you not know that God entrusted you with that money (all above what buys necessities for your families) to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to help the stranger, the widow, the fatherless; and, indeed, as far as it will go, to relieve the wants of all mankind? How can you, how dare you, defraud the Lord, by applying it to any other purpose?
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.
Tony Compola
I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact I just said “shit” than you are that 30,000 kids died last night.