PASSION AND COMPASSION

Just as the healed, healthy body gets up, stretches, and moves, so does the human personality healed by God long to be involved in loving, creative encounter with other human beings.  Reaching out to heal others is a spontaneous development in the growing wholeness of our spirits.  Just as the yeast kneaded into the dough acts, grows, and manifests itself throughout the changing loaf, so does the radical act of God within us work change in us and through us. This change is that of passion and compassion as we encounter the agony of the torn, fragmented world around us.

Within a few months after consenting to God's deep healing within myself, I began to notice a new, painful awareness of the hurting people around me. On buses, in airports, on the busy sidewalks of the city I began to notice faces lined with pain and weariness. It became painful to open the newspaper and to watch the evening news. As the healing deepened within me, the sensitivity grew. I began to want to do something for the wounds of others. I began to realize that this longing was an inseparable part of growing within the healing of God's love. 

-- Flora Slosson Wuellner in “Prayer, Stress, and Our Inner Wounds”, published by The Upper Room, Nashville, TN.   Used with permission.

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