MrWonder's Bible Chat

Sympathy is natural; he is inhuman who lacks it. "Diamond cut diamond," is a poor maxim.

All need sympathy, and every one should show it. Let your life and words be as sunshine and medicine. Do not complain of not receiving sympathy or you will certainly make it less, but show sympathy with others and you will seldom, if ever have any reason to complain.

Love always begets love and sympathy. Let us not parade our own griefs, sorrows, bereavements and troubles, and so become beggars and paupers, passing our hats, or begging for sympathy; but receiving comfort from God, seek to comfort others "that are in any trouble," so shall we get all the human sympathy we deserve and need ( 2 Cor 1:3-4 ). Those who talk and make the most ado about their troubles have often the fewest, just as an empty wagon makes more noise than a loaded one.

Guard against getting sour, fretful, cross or complaining. You may do this by keeping sweet, contented, kind and courteous. Your life will then be a benediction to others and a rapture to yourself.

1. Sympathy should be expressed intelligently.

A man on board a tossing ship, gazing sympathetically at one that was casting up his accounts into the deep, dolefully said, "Are you sick?" The other replied, "Confound you; do you think I am doing this for fun."

Have you never as senselessly said to children or adults "I fear you are sick," or "How bad you do look." Many are made sick, or worse, if not killed, by such kindly-meant expressions.

2. Do not suppress, but cultivate your sympathetic nature.

Sorrows and bereavements usually develop and draw out our sympathies with others in sorrow or trouble. Show your sympathy with those bereaved; not by the cant expressions: " I sympathize with you," "don't grieve," "God knows best," etc, but by kind acts and wise and few words of comfort.

3. Never lose sympathy with children and boys and girls. If you do, the sooner you are dead the better for the world and yourself, too.

4. Do not forget to show sympathy with your parents, and especially with mother. Some sons pay no more respect to their mother's prayers and tears for them than they do to the wind or the raindrops from the eaves. Others are always thoughtful.

While at home, be always kind and loving in words and acts; and when away, do not forget to write or call home often and send little tokens of love.

5. Sons and daughters need sympathy. Many children at home and school are soured, disheartened and ruined by unsympathetic words and treatment.

Boys and girls of all ages enjoy being made the companions of their parents. This method ensures respect, confidence, obedience, love and goodness.

6. The poor have a large claim upon our sympathies. Remember that what we do to those in needy circumstances Christ regards as done to Himself ( Matt 25:34-40 ). Christianity broadens our sympathies. Infidelity builds no hospitals or benevolent institutions.

Let our sympathies with the poor, and with benevolent and religious objects be tangible, and not mere sentiment or cant.

7. Wives especially need sympathy. "Husbands, love your wives!" A wife said, "I can live weeks on one loving word." As a husband, do not be sparing in your expressions of love and appreciation, but let them be of daily occurence. Keep up the appearance of love, so shall the reality be fostered.

Many a wife, whose husband has shown a lack of sympathy by spending his evenings away from home or by not being as kind, attentive, patient and outspoken in his feelings of attachment as when they were lovers, has in consequence, pined away and died prematurely. He will then speak of his "beloved wife," whereas he murdered her as certainly as if he had starved her or given her slow poison. Tokens of appreciation and words of love in life are better than a monument in the graveyard.

8. Husbands also need sympathy. I have noticed that a husband is hard to drive, but easily lapped round the wife's finger; and it is nice to be lapped.

Many husbands are largely what their wives make them. We read, "Her husband shall be known in the gates" ( Prov 31:23 ).

9. Manifest strong sympathy with your minister by high esteem, regular attendance at the services, cordial sociability, and by willing cooperation in "every good work;" so will he have grateful thoughts of you and speak of you as "My joy and crown" ( Phil 4:1 ).

10. A minister, to be most successful, must have a Christ-like love and sympathy with saved and unsaved and so will he get their sympathy.

There would be more sympathy felt between a minister and his audience, and he could preach much better if he would stand nearer to his audience than most preachers do. Personally I want the minister to be within ten feet of their audience and have no pulpit desk or table between them and their audience.

There is more in the spirit and tone in which a thing is said, to do good or harm, than in the words uttered. A young minister, after returning from preaching, said, "I tell you I gave it to them tonight!" I asked, "Did you give it to them tenderly?"

Words spoken without love and sympathy have no more effect for good than "Sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal" ( 1 Cor 13:1 ). We should all remember this fact.

To him who is disposed to hit, and cut, and slash, and drive, Jesus says as to Peter, "Put up thy sword, for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword" ( Matt 26:52 ).

Jesus directs us, "Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves." That is, be wise as Satan and harmless as the Lord.

Let our motto ever be, "Speaking the truth in love" ( Eph 4:15 ). He or she is a wise person that can rebuke so as to do good. Most public rebukes and many private ones are unsympathetic expressions of personal feeling, and so do injury.

Never say, "Do this, or that, or get out." Always leave off the harsh "get out."

All rebukes should command the respect of Christ, of our higher self, and of the better nature of the one rebuked. More depends upon the way in which a thing is said than on what is said. Let the heart be loving, and the voice and words will not seem harsh.

11. Let your sympathies be given to every minister, evangelist, person, church, organization and method that God employs to elevate mankind and save men.

Do not be so stupid as to think that your church or your method is the only correct one. If other people would act as you do they would be as useless as you are.

Have sympathy even for bigots, for they are to be pitied. The feeling we may entertain against a bigot may be as bad as his bigotry.

Avoid a critical spirit. "Live and let live," is a good maxim.

I want to announce that the committee on criticism is disbanded. Do not dare reorganize it.

12. Be kind to all animals, and especially to horses, dogs and birds. The wise man says, "A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast" ( Prov 12:10 ).

If a man is religious, his cat and dog will know it, and be the better for it.

Do not kill birds, or anything else merely for fun. You should read "Black Beauty," the "Uncle Tom's Cabin' of the horse.

I was greatly influenced as a boy to be kind to God's creatures, by reading the stories where the robins with leaves covered up the babes in the wood, and where the frogs said to the boys that were stoning them; "It may be sport to you, but it is death to us."

13. Have special sympathy with all the erring. Never seem to be so unlike Christ as to say about any person, "I have no sympathy with him." Jesus wept over Jerusalem, though they had rejected Him and were reprobate ( Luke 19:41-42 ). Persons may sink so low that we cannot admire them, but no one can be so mean, low, cruel, or wicked as to be undeserving of Christ-like sympathy.

If you had been born in a drunken home, tempted as others, surrounded only by wicked people, brought up in idleness and sin, where and what would you be today?

Thank God for what you are, but do not despise others. We cannot afford to lose sympathy with any one as we believe in "the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man."

The worse persons are, the more do they need sympathy, and the less will they be affected for good by any unsympathetic or harsh words.

A fallen girl, an outcast from society, at her mother's funeral, stood weeping as she gazed upon the face now silent in death. A kind man hopefully said to her, "Do you not desire to become a Christian and live to meet your godly mother in heaven?" She answered, sobbing, "I do, and God helping me, I will." Fervently he said, "God bless you my friend and help you to meet your vow." Looking up through her tears, she exclaimed, "You bless me. Those are the first kind words I have received for ten years, except from mother."

Those kind words were the means of her salvation, and a subsequent Christian life.

There are persons all about us, of all ages and character, that by loving words, and acts of kindness and sympathy, we may win from lives of sin and despondency, for Christ and the Church, usefulness and heaven.

14. Sympathy is especially Christian. It is enjoined as the law of Christ, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" ( Gal 6:2 ). To do this is a luxury that we should not deny ourselves.

Christ our Exemplar, was most sympathetic. "He was moved with compassion." He is still the same, and His precious promise is true, "I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you."

"Cast thy burden on the Lord, and He will sustain thee," and you will then know how to comfort and help others.

Practical expressions of love and sympathy are the true test of character and the basis of final reward. Jesus Christ has declared that to those who show Christian sympathy with others, He will say, "Come ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom." "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me" ( Matt 25:40 ).

Brother Love