Today I was reminded about the cost of compassion.
Those who are willing to be like Jesus are also willing to pay the cost. What is that cost? It is unknown until the moment it is due.
Sometimes it is feeding the hungry.
Sometimes it is visiting someone when you would rather dive into a bed and pull a sheet over your head.
Often it means going the extra mile and investigating what the need is - not the want, the need.
More often than not, it means inconvenience.
It can also mean ministering at a time when others think you are over the top and doing what is not deserved.
Soldier of The Cross, didn't' He say that we should attend to Him when He is ill, visit Him in prison and clothe Him when He is naked? What specific and valuable instruction.
My father was a remarkable Servant. The eldest boy of eight children, he had to work fulltime and raise the family from the age of fourteen. A year before he died of cancer, he huffed and puffed his way to show me a cowpath in Fonda, Iowa. He stopped and pointed to a spot of grass and said, "This is where I accepted Christ as my Savior. I was carrying two pails of milk when I realized that the Sunday sermon has made it clear that I had to make a personal decision. So, I put down both pails, right here. I got down on my knees and received Jesus as my Savior. At that moment, I knew I was not my own, and that I needed to spend the rest of my life letting the Lord reveal Himself through my speech and actions."
I was forty two when I had those priceless moments with my father..
And, oh, did he ever live it. When he was in seminary and earning a living as a church janitor and interim pastor, we had little food. I was seven years old when he finished seminary at Trinity Evangelical Free Seminary in Chicago. Sometimes we had only enough food for a few bites apiece, particularly at supper, but I never knew we were poor. And when we had the least, we would put everything on one plate, decorate it somehow, cover it with waxed paper, and we would go to someone's house whom we knew had nothing. We would put the plate on the step, knock on the door and dive into the bushes or run around the side.
I thought it was the best thing in the world and the most fun a person could have.
Many times, I saw my father weep over the lost, the hungry, the dying, the poor and the unfairly accused.
A stunning impact on a child.
Soldier of The Cross, because you are a Soldier, it means you are a Servant. You have told Him you will take up the Cross and follow Him.
The willingness to pay the cost is supernatural and is the result of prayer.
Tell Him aloud. In the understanding.
Today.