The Gift of Compassion

Before she passed away in April my mother-in-law lived with us for nine months and we continue to get mail for her. Somehow with Ruth’s change of address she wound up on every charitable mailing list there is— save the children, the animals, the earth and the elderly in foreign lands. I continue to open the solicitations simply because some of them contain pennies, nickels and dimes. On the one hand I have to laugh because Ruth gets more mail that I do, on the other hand the sheer volume of requests for support has jaded my level of compassion. We know that God is a God of compassion, but Paul notes the sovereign right of God to dispense mercy on whom he chooses. “What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy” (Ro 9:14-16 NIV).