Two years old and it's all ready too much. A friend of mine and I were chatting about these pressures the other night and discussing how all this pressure is proving in this generation to produce more children than ever before who are so set on achieving, that they naturally push others down to reach the top. Empathy is dying. Love for our neighbor is being overcome by love for ourselves. And the outcome is not lovely.
"But how do we teach them empathy?" she said.
What a crucial question among so many other questions. It's a question that brings tears to my eyes. It's a question about love.
Only by example. I'm convinced that there is absolutely no other way to "teach" empathy than to show it by living it. Not sometimes, not only when it comes easy with those who are easy, but just as my dear friend Jesus said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind... and... You shall love your neighbor as yourself." It's a command. THE command, if you will.
And I look to my savior's example. God's very own example. Jesus led his disciples by his example. "Come, follow me, " he said. Not, "come and sit down and listen to me tell you how to live, to be liked, to be better versions of yourself." But "STOP doing what you're doing, leave everything else behind, and follow me." His disciples watched. They listened. They ate with him, drank with him. They served with him They came alongside him and participated with him. He lived out what's truly important. He followed his own command. He showed us what love is. He showed us who God is. He showed us who God created us to be. He showed us what love means. And a lot of people didn't like it. A lot of people felt threatened by it. But he didn't stop loving and he lived it out to the point of a shameful, terrible, and unspeakably painful death. (But you can only try to punish perfection. Perfect love cannot be consumed by death. So I'm so thankful that wasn't the end of his story!)
Which is why we get the chance to continue living out his story. We get the chance to obey his command.
We get the chance to "teach" it to our children and our neighbors and anyone who cares to know. But it won't work to say to them, "come and sit down and listen to me tell you how to live, to be liked, to be better versions of yourself." But "STOP doing what you're doing, leave everything else behind, and follow me as I show you who I follow." We get a chance to live out what's truly important!
However, in thinking about all of this I began pouring my life into the Great Heavenly Sifter. (That is not in the Bible, so don't bother looking it up because I just made it up, but I imagine it's a sifter that God himself is holding.) Please forgive me as I speak in metaphor. I'm ridiculous. I imagine that everything in my life that's holding me back from following Jesus' example as sand. So much is lost in it, covered by it. I have begun to pour my life, sand and all, in this sifter and am allowing God to shake me. As he does, His priorities are beginning to rise to the surface. The sand has taken up so much space! And a lot of that sand is my favorite. It's actually not easy and often times painful to let it fall through. Ok, enough with the metaphor. But let's face it. There are lots of things that get in the way. There are a lot of burdens that we carry, "harmless" stuff that holds us back, and many of our priorities hinder us from following Jesus. There was a lot the disciples had to leave behind.
The truth is, without Jesus example, I'm left just grasping at straws trying to do my best. The blind leading the blind. And without letting him shake me, well, I'm just fooling myself in all this sand.
"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
