Compassion

Taken at the Benedictine foundation at the traditional site of the miracle of the feeding of the 4000

Mark 8: 1 - 5
The miracle of the feeding of the four thousand starts from the place of God's compassion. Jesus sees a crowd of hungry people and turns to his disciples and says 'I want to feed this rabble because I care so much about them'. The disciples are horrified: how can we do this, we do not have the resources, we have barely enough to feed ourselves. The story that unfolds tells of a miracle, of the multiplication of those scarce resources. It says to me that our response, as a small church, to the needs in our community is not good enough. We say 'we can't do it, we don't have the people or the money.'

My question is, where is the need in our community, who do you discern God has compassion for?

A while back a local pastor wrote these prophetic words for our church community, 'Guard yourselves well and make it your aim to be fruitful and feed others with the fruit you grow.'

I pray we can make headway with this task in the year to come.