Keep Your Heart of Compassion Open

One definition of compassion is simply “feeling what other people feel, being concerned, showing that you care.” In other words, when you see somebody in need, you feel their pain. You take time to com­fort them. When somebody is discouraged, you feel that discourage­ment. You take it to heart and you do your best to cheer them up. If you see somebody struggling financially, you don’t just pat them on the back and give them a quick verse. No, you take time for them, and you do what you can to help. You have a genuine concern. You show them that you really care.

Everywhere you go these days people are hurting. People are dis­couraged; many have broken dreams. They’ve made mistakes, and now their lives are in a mess. They need to feel compassion and unconditional love. They don’t need somebody to judge and criticize them, or to tell them what they’re doing wrong. (In most cases, they already know that!) They need somebody to bring hope, somebody to bring healing, somebody to show mercy. Really, they’re looking for a friend, somebody who will be there to encourage them, who will take the time to listen to their story and genuinely care.

We’re all so busy. We have our own priorities and important plans and agendas. Often, our attitude is: I don’t want to be inconvenienced. Don’t bother me with your problems. I’ve got enough problems of my own. How can you tell if your heart is open or closed? Easy. Are you con­cerned about other people, or are you concerned about only yourself? Do you take time to make a difference, to encourage others, to lift their spirits, to make people feel better about themselves? Or are you too busy with your own plans?

If you want to live your best life now, you must make sure that you keep your heart of compassion open. We need to be on the lookout for people we can bless. We need to be willing to be interrupted and in­convenienced every once in a while if it means we can help to meet somebody else’s need.

Many people are unhappy and are not experiencing life to its fullest because they’ve closed their hearts to compassion. They are motivated by only what they want and what they think they need. They rarely do anything for anybody else unless they have an ulterior goal in mind. They are self-involved and self-centered.

Where do we go from here? What’s happening to us? Are we deviating from the original plan?

Think about it…

Bringing up a child ?

The family is the social unit invented to fill up the world with representatives of loving characters. It’s a place for nurturing and developing babies until they’re mature enough to go out of the family as adults and to multiply its image in other surroundings.

Boundaries and Responsibility

The good parent, wants to help his children, grow up. He wants to see us “become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness". Part of this maturing process is helping us know how to take responsibility for our lives. It is second only to learning how to bond, to form strong attachments, the most important thing parents can give children is a sense of responsibility knowing what they are responsible for and knowing what they aren’t responsible for, knowing how to say no and knowing how to accept no. Responsibility is a gift of enormous value.

We’ve all been around middle-aged people who have the boundaries of an eighteen-month-old. They have tantrums or sulk when others set limits on them, or they simply fold and comply with others just to keep the peace. Remember that these adult people started off as little people. They learned long, long ago to either fear or hate boundaries. The relearning process for adults is laborious.

Instilling vs. Repairing Boundaries

A wise mother of adult children once watched her younger friend struggle with her youngster. The child was refusing to behave, and the young mother was quickly losing her mind. Affirming the mother’s decision to make the child sit on a chair by himself, the older woman said, "Developing boundaries in young children is that proverbial ounce of prevention." If we teach responsibility, limit setting, and delay of gratification early on, the smoother our children’s later years of life will be. The later we start, the harder we and they have to work.

If you’re a parent of older children, don’t lose heart. It just means boundary development will be met with more resistance. In their minds, they do not have a lot to gain by learning boundaries. You’ll need to spend more time work­ing on it, getting more support from friends and praying harder!

Respecting the Limits of Others

From an early age, children need to be able to accept the limits of parents, siblings, and friends. They need to know that others don’t always want to play with them, that others may not want to watch the same TV shows they want, and that others may want to eat dinner at a different restaurant than they do. They need to know that the world doesn’t revolve around them.

This is important for a couple of reasons. First, the ability to learn to accept limits teaches us to take responsibility for ourselves. Knowing that others are not always available for us, at our beck and call, helps us too become inwardly directed instead of externally driven. It helps us carry our own knapsack.

Have you ever been around a child who can’t hear no, who keeps whining, cajoling, throwing a tantrum, or pouting till he or she gets his or her way? The problem is, the longer we hate and resist the limits of others, the more dependent we will be on others. We expect others to take care of us, rather than simply taking care of ourselves.

At any rate, God has constructed life itself to teach us this law. It’s the only way we can live on this planet together. Sooner on later, someone will say a no to us that we can’t ignore. It’s built into the fabric of life.

Parents have a sober responsibility of teaching their chil­dren to have an internal sense of boundaries and to respect the boundaries of others. However not many of you should presume to be teachers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

There are certainly no guarantees that our training will be heeded. Children have the responsibility to listen and learn. The older they are, the more responsibility they have. Yet as we learn about our town boundary issues, take responsibility for them, and grow up ourselves, we increase our kids’ chances to learn boundaries in an adult world in which these abilities will be sorely needed every day of their lives.

"God gave us a choice, however never the one to choose our parents"