Daily Lesson for October 20, 2015

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Lamentations chapter 1 verses 1, 2 and 12a:

How lonely sits the city
that was full of people!
How like a widow has she become,
she who was great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the provinces
has become a slave.
2 She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers
she has none to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
they have become her enemies.

12 “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?

When I lived in Vermont I would sometimes take the "Vermonter" Amtrak line from Burlington down to New York City or Washington, DC.

Just as the train comes into New York City proper the windows begin to look out onto abandoned industrial buildings, tenements, pawn shop, dollar stores, pay-day lending places, and the millions upon millions of people in the City with all their own stories and family stories. Somewhere right in there you can look out and up and see that someone placed a great-big sign for all the travelers to think on as they make their way towards Manhattan.  The words on the sign are from the book of Lamentations:

"Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?"

To have compassion is to literally "feel with" others.  To have compassion is to look at and to feel and not just pass by. We cannot do something to address all the needs we see in a place like New York, or even our own place. But to see and to feel and to lament -- this is what keeps us human.

If we ever get to the point where we just pass by, and consider all the suffering and pain as nothing, or don't even see it at all, that's when we've lost something of ourselves.

That sort of makes me wonder if of all the millions in New York City I don't actually know the one who put that sign up.

You might know Him too.