Empathy

Alice Walker wrote:  "This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power, and no empathy".

Empathy is a very difficult thing.  It is the ability to reach into someone else's heart and feel what they are feeling.  It is the rare ability to not just understand what someone else is feeling, but to actually feel what they must be feeling.  It is a wonderful gift, but in today's world it can become a very heavy thing to carry around.  

I ask myself, all the time, WHY do children get cancer?  WHY do children go missing?  WHY are so many people becoming addicted to drugs?  WHY are so many children born on the autism spectrum?  The truth is....I don't have any answers, and I weep for every person that struggles.

Personally, I think we worry about the wrong things.  We are consumed with right versus left, who the celebrities are dating, and how much the Yankee outfielder is being paid. Meanwhile, we have 2 million children every year who are trafficked into the commercial sex trade.  We have over 7 million people die every year from cancer.  Approximately 1 in 60 children are diagnosed with autism.  1 in 6 people in the US do not have enough food on a daily basis.  Approximately 11% of adult homeless individuals are veterans.  

Somehow, some way, we have to become a society that rejects the frivolous nonsense, and begins to open it's eyes to the suffering of our brothers and sisters.  We must all feel the empathy that is required to reach out to those less fortunate than us.  We must reject the "politics" and embrace the humanity that is neighbor helping neighbor.  Having a single child sold into slavery is an abomination, having a single veteran sleeping in a subway is a tragedy.  Needing to beg for resources to cure cancer, while designer drugs have their own commercial time is horrible.  Having any child or adult with mental health issues go untreated is something that we will all have to answer for someday.

I ask everyone today to please set aside their political feelings, agendas, and animosity, and pledge to stand up for all human.  To not judge by someone's color, religion, orientation, or beliefs, and to start treating them with the compassion that all humans deserve.  To place our priorities with those less fortunate than us, hurting, disabled, sick, and lost.  

Matthew 10:8 says "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those that have leprosy, drive out demons.  Freely you have received; freely give".  

In other words....if you have been blessed with food on your table and good health, you should ensure the same for others.

Lets become a people who care for one another.

Be well and God bless.    Tom