empathy

'Empathy' is the value for the month along at the local primary school.

It's Thursday, so I was there again this morning for the two assemblies.

What is 'empathy'? the Head Teacher asked.

I wasn't as hopeful as he plainly was that there'd be anything but a silence in response. I mean what child is going to know the meaning of the word?

Presumably a rhetorical question! But no. The children responded well. They clearly had a grasp of what this meant. Even the Primary 1 to 3s had a bit of a grasp of the thing.

Mind you, this is the second week they've had this 'value for the month'. They're quick learners.

The Head always handles these values well. Even when they're hard to get across. The children get the picture.

Especially today when he took off his shoes and suggested that one of the children swap with him. Step into his shoes and see what it's like being the Head.

They got the idea all right.

Empathy. Identifying with the needs and feelings and circumstances of another.

It's what Jesus does supremely. The whole good news is all about his empathy. Identifying with us. Standing in our sandals.

It's what, as those who follow him, we're seeking to aspire to in our turn.

So today I've been out and seeing some folk who've been bereaved in recent days. One of them was an older man whose wife had died.

I mentioned him a few weeks back. He's the one who said that neither he nor his wife were 'really that religious'. Which is a good job, basically.

But he's keen to come to worship on a Sunday, and had even gone to the length of looking us up on the internet to check the time of the service.

One big question, though. Would he be welcome to come?

Pardon me? Why on earth would a person like that not be welcome to come?

He explained he was brought up an Anglican.

Strange the notions people have that somehow that might make him .. well, like the enemy. Not welcome.

I hope I made it clear that Jesus simply isn't even remotely like that. But it helped me to see once again what it's like to stand in the shoes of someone like that, who's not been at worship since childhood perhaps and fears that he's maybe unwelcome.

Later I called on a lady whose elderly sister had died. She's the last of a family of eight, so she feels the grief acutely.

She'd just, a few days back, received some photos from her sister's house which included a photo of her father when he'd been a boy. Except there were that many boys in the photo she hadn't a clue which her father actually was!

Her heart was sore with disappointment. She'd never know.

But then the next morning, with the light of the sun shining in at a certain angle, she chanced on the photo again: and the light shed by the angle of the sun enabled her to see the faintest 'X' impressed upon one boy, whom now she knew must be indeed her father.

"Divine intervention!" she joyfully declared.

And I guess in a way it was.

He's good at that. It's the way that we, all of us come to know and recognise that Jesus is the very Son of God.

Without the Lord's decisive intervention, this man is just another individual on the canvas of a long and ancient history. Only as God, by his Spirit, shines upon the page, as it were, are we able to see that cross alongside Jesus and come to know that he's indeed the One!

It was good to be able to stand in her shoes and see how that divine intervention. Because as I stand again in the shoes of that other man I visited earlier on, I'm aware once again that only as God shines his light upon the page will he (and others) see that Jesus is the One.

As the song says - "Shine, Jesus, shine!"