The Essence of Empathy

FRESH Official Podcast

Empathy is one of the most poignant and powerful expressions of love known to humanity. Being there for someone, aching with them, or indeed celebrating with them, just speaks love like nothing else.

Yep, empathy’s a wondrous thing. And yet in the daily cut and thrust of life, as you’re trying to do all that you have to get done, dealing with your own challenges, your own emotions, it’s something that we often forget to show.

Just think back over the last day or so to your dealings with the people around you. As you were talking with them, not talking with them, working with them … whatever that relationship looks like … did you think about how they felt? Did you feel it too? Did you show them that you understood where they were at?

Perhaps that all sounds a bit touchy-feely. How do you make sense of that in your daily life with all you have going on? Well, let’s get really practical here in translating this thing called empathy into action. Jesus put it like this:

Matthew 7:12 Do for others what you would want them to do for you. This is the meaning of the Law of Moses and the teaching of the prophets.

That’s His command – to understand and feel what others feel, and to translate that into action by treating them how you’d want to be treated. And when you think about it, that’s the very essence of empathy.

It’s empathy in action in a way that communicates unambiguously that you really do understand; that you really do feel what they feel.

Do for others what you would want them to do for you.

That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.