The Discipline of Compassion

Before I get to today’s theme … here is this week’s exciting news. After three long years in the writing, revising, editing and publication stages, the soft-cover proof copy of Downstream from Eden finally arrived at my door.

With some visiting friends and family, Tiffany and I celebrated with champagne and a prayer of thanksgiving. After a quick inspection I gave the green light to the publishers, and in a few short days both hard-cover and paperback editions will be available from this site. Watch for exact details.

For those who can’t wait, the e-book version is already available on Kindle, fractionally priced at $3.99 which is less than a penny a page, or even better at $3.49 from Kobo Books.

Now, for today’s theme from my list of disciplines for living in the most fully human way in our less-than perfect world --

“The Discipline of Compassion”

There’s a lot of pain in our world – and tears give that pain a poignant human face. Tears are perhaps the most exquisite form of water in the world – tears of suffering or loneliness, tears of grief or lament, tears of sympathy or of regret. And the frequency of tears in the Bible is a clarion call to compassion.

Baca - You Can't Skirt This Valley

Life is a journey. For some it's an exciting adventure, for others a plodding task, lonely and futile. For people of faith like the singer of Psalm 84, life is a pilgrimage, a journey towards God.

How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty ...

My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God (v2).

The singer yearns to be in God’s presence and can’t wait to arrive at her destination, but her song is about the journey itself – the rigors and rewards of the road.

By the Rivers of Babylon

The rivers of Babylon were famous long before the late ‘70’s disco group Boney M sang about them.


The Euphrates River  - Photo by Jayel Aheram

The Tigris River and the Euphrates define Mesopotamia – a huge fertile plain ‘between the rivers’, the cradle of civilization. But Israel experienced Babylon as a wasteland, a spiritual desert, despite its rivers of affluence and so-called civilization.

Babylon’s armies had sacked Jerusalem mercilessly, captured her leading populace as trophies-of-war, and marched them to Babylon. No place could have felt more alien to the exiles than the banks of the Euphrates.

The Invisible but Vital Resource

A recent report by the C.D. Howe Institute on protecting Canada’s groundwater reserves calls them ‘the invisible but vital resource’. That phrase perfectly describes the theme of today’s Wonder of Water post about a fiery Spanish nun.

In her early years as a nun Theresa of Avila (1515-1585) was bored with prayer and luke-warm towards God. Yet she longed to be spiritually alive and to know God in the core of her soul - and eventually came to a place of passionate love for God.

In her autobiography, The Book of My Life, she tells how she grew in her experience of prayer, how God’s love became for her ‘an invisible but vital resource’. Using the imagery of water, she illustrates four stages of this journey.

Tears of Joy

For Valentine’s Day, here is a story of great love and deep gratitude and the most exquisite water we know.

She was a woman who got invited to men’s homes for only one reason. But she heard about another man who was different – a giver not a taker. He himself had a reputation for socializing with people like her and maybe she had met him somewhere – maybe overheard him telling another harlot that God heals the broken-hearted, washes away tears of shame and forgives debts long overdue.

How could she know for sure? And how could she honor him – this man who looked past her disgrace and saw worth in her beyond what she could see? How could she express the gratitude and affection welling up inside her?