I wonder if Billie Holliday knew she was such a great theologian when she said:

Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

Last week I wrote about the sadness of seeing my eldest daughter Victoria off to college. I'm told the "click through" rate of that article was more than twice that of any article previous. Why? Because that was a battle I was writing about...the battle against change, against loss, against fear. And like Billie says, everyone you meet is fighting one. And of course, so are you. In fact, you might say that life is not only fighting one battle after another, but discovering you've been fighting all sorts of battles you weren't even aware were raging. "It aint' easy being me" is something everybody could say.

Here's the deal. Nobody is unscathed by the fallenness of this world. Jesus looked at people and said they were "harassed and helpless". I've always loved that description. Harassed.... things have been visited upon us in our lifetimes. For some of us, horrific evil, that charred our character, cut grooves into our soul, and still torpedoes our sense of well being and safety. Helpless.... unable to extricate ourselves from this matrix of fallenness and fragmentation, commensurate with the feelings that go along with helplessness. Sadness, depression, abandonment, despair. Pretty bleak picture Jesus painted of us isn't' it? He went on to say "they are like sheep without a shepherd". Shepherds lead us to nourishment, thriving, health, and growth, and yet Jesus says we are without that leadership to show us the way.

But before Jesus describes anybody else, he describes himself. Matthew writes that he felt "compassion" for them. That word compassion is not found in classic Greek. It's a word Matthew makes up because no word in the Greek language suited his purpose. It is expressive of the deepest emotions, a "striving of the bowels---a yearning of the innermost nature with pity." How did Matthew know this about Jesus? It must have been pretty obvious just by looking at him.

Welcome to Jesus' battle. A battle for you, and a battle he would win, so we could deal with ours, and look with compassion on one another and the city in which we live. That's what we've been talking about the last few weeks isn't it? What does it mean for our community to more and more be marked with this kind of empathy, patience, and wisdom, towards one another and our city as we see ourselves as a community of battlers? Billie says it well... be kinder than necessary. But not with a self fueled resolve. Rather, motivated by a Savior who knows our true condition and battled for us.