Compassion
Dead at Thirty-Two
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
—Matthew 9:36
About two hundred years ago (or was it yesterday?), Alice lived two doors away from us. She didn’t profess to be a Christian, and those of us who knew her well knew she had struggles, like the rest of us, which she didn’t always win. But Christ loved her. And, Christian or not, he worked in her life, making her cheerful, sensitive, sympathetic, and generous. Like so many others, she had a hard life. She had four children, serious heart trouble, and a hard-drinking husband who gave her many a beating.
I can still see her in the street, leaning against her window with her arms folded, wisecracking with the neighbors, milkman, or anyone who showed the slightest interest in being friendly. More than once I caught her crying, wondering how she was going to get through the week with so little money and so many things to be done with it. She was thin, too thin, and her skin was clear and smooth, almost transparent. (With skin like hers, we could easily see the bruises.) She kept her hair swept up, and her eyes were strikingly beautiful—pale blue and big and round. She died undergoing her second heart surgery. I think she was thirty-two years old.
Alice reminds me of all the people I’ve known who, day after day, without end, struggle to keep their heads above water. Never, in all their lives, are they able to go to a shop and buy something without first doing serious arithmetic. Never, from the cradle to the grave, are they sure the money for rent, heat, food, and clothing is going to be there. It’s that endless grind that beats so many people, that takes the light out of their eyes. They march up from the gates of birth with sunshine on their faces, dreaming dreams, purposing purposes, but life just wears them down. Then we put them in the ground at the age of thirty-two, look at each other sadly, and shrug in helplessness.
It’s at times like these that you hungrily search for moments when you did something comforting for the Alices in your life, something kind, something that brought a smile or a happy, speechless look of gratitude. Not so you can brag and think you weren’t such a bad neighbor after all. No, it’s just that it becomes important to know that people like Alice didn’t die without a moment of knowing somebody cared, without friendly arms to hold them while they sobbed. It’s at times like these that your heart remembers and is glad for all the moments when cups of sugar were loaned or borrowed or packets of tea were halved.
I’m sick and tired of comfortable Christians dismissing other people’s heartache as if it made no difference in how those people respond to God. I’m tired of comfortable Christians receiving endless pulpit and book therapy because they have a "tough time," while people like Alice (who number in the multimillions) are given the take-it-or-leave-it kind of offer of the gospel.
Take me, for example. As well as I think I know what I’m talking about in this matter, as deeply as I think I feel about it, I still slip into the notion that we all have an equal shot at life. That just isn’t true! But if I know it isn’t true, how can I forget that so quickly and easily? Why do I look at people and assume that each of them has the same chance to hear and respond?
Didn’t I hear that the people of Israel—beaten and despairing because of generations of exploitation and oppression—didn’t I hear that when the Good News came, they weren’t able to hear it because of their pain?1 Their hard lives had beaten the hope out of them; their long, unchanging weeks and months and years made it too hard for them to believe. And God took all that into account!
Oh sweet Lord Jesus, what am I going to do about what I’m writing here? What are we who are reading this going to do? Can you not enter our lives with greater vision and enable us to see Alice all around us? Are we deliberately keeping you out? Are we afraid to see? We seem to be able to dismiss this whole matter with such ease. At least, I seem to be able to. I wish I could believe I am the only one, but I know I’m not.
Lord, have you been speaking to us all along, but because we have preferred to hear other things, you have decided to let us go our way? Don’t leave us this way. It’s so ugly, and we long for your beauty.
