Thursday, December 22, 2022

Compassion: Almost a Lost Art

 -Wizard of Id


This comic has so touched my heart. Compassion exudes from it.


Fewer people these days ever show kindness or compassion to others. And as time marches on these precious people will be gone. 


So many human beings, even when brought up in loving homes, are turning away from their parents, their families who love them to seek out malevolence among the peoples of the world.


Their hardness of heart connects them to mean, covetous people, and so...these grown children quickly become mirror images of their new friends. They will even proudly call these mean, evil people "their family", "their mother and their father..." when nothing can be farther from the truth.


How does this happen? 


Tickled ears? 


Jealousy?


Covetousness?


Control Freaks?


..."But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron"...


1 Timothy 4:1-2 NAS    -NIV translates this: ..."in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.


Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron."...


How else can we explain the trend to hate your own family?


Gentle readers...make sure you do not allow yourself to close down the part of you which expresses kindness and compassion.  These are traits of our Heavenly Father!  He taught us these, He put them in us. He will NEVER  abandon kindness or compassion for His children.  


Don't give up on your family who have abandoned you, though. Those who have chosen to hurt you terribly by their words or deeds.  The LORD hears your cries and He constantly works on your wayward people.  


It will be their choice to listen to the King of kings....but for you, dear mothers and sisters...you choose to listen and learn from the One who is able to save even the wayward!

*

2 Timothy 3 NIV

"But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.


People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. 


Have nothing to do with such people.


They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires,  always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.


Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. 


They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. 


But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.


You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. 


Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.


In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.


But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.


All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

*


No comments: