A merciful and compassionate God

The Lord calls the disciples to go on vacation, find a place of retreat, and invites them to spend some time together resting. The Christian life has to be a balanced life. Not everything is simply serving, serving, working, working, and even in the secular world as well or at work, at home, housewives or whatever. We must take time to rest, relax, charge the batteries and then return to the charge with new strength.

That is an unavoidable law of life in general, and certainly also of Christian life and ministry. And we have to give each other opportunities to take those break times.

Interestingly, what happens here reveals something about the person of Jesus that I want to share with you as well.

They get on a boat, they go in the direction of that place of retreat, but what happens? That multitude that knows of the Word of life that contains the ministry of Jesus, the wonderful miracles that He does, the healings that He does, the wonderful healings, discover that the Lord has gone out and is going to the other side of the lake, and they hurry then, the word gets out and they run to the other side of the lake.

And when the Lord arrives there and perhaps is preparing to go out with the disciples to that secluded place that they have agreed to visit for a time, he discovers that there is a great crowd that is waiting for him, hungry and eager, and in need of those words of life that He can give them.

The Lord's reaction at that moment is interesting.

I imagine that in the first moment perhaps there was a reaction of a little annoyance from Him. I would have felt that way. Who knows if he did not even experience that, but the truth is that at the moment all the plans for the Lord of rest were spoiled, and those vacations so needed at the moment are interrupted by a great human mass that is in need of ministry from the Lord.

Christ's reaction is what I am most interested in analyzing. It is one of compassion and mercy, something that characterized Him over and over again. It says that: The Lord seeing that great multitude that had come from the cities and had gathered to Him, and that was waiting for Him, "had compassion on them, because they were like sheep that had no shepherd."

That was the Lord's reaction over and over when people came to him. We saw earlier how, when the woman with the issue of blood approaches Him, and pesters Him with her need, the Lord responds in a gentle and merciful way. When the friends of the paralyzed man lower their friend's bed through the roof, the Lord, instead of rejecting them, agrees to their urgent request. When the Syro-Phoenician woman also pesters the Lord with her need, he grants her request.

The Lord again and again cares mercifully to the people around Him. Even His own disciples were not so merciful.

When Bartimaeus, for example, begins to shout to the Lord: "Lord Son of David, have mercy on me, heal me", people say to Bartimaeus: shut up, leave the Lord alone. He is too busy. When children approach the Lord to be blessed, the disciples distance them thinking that they are mere children and that the Lord has no interest in these infantile creatures. But the Lord corrects them.

In this same text that we are discussing, we will see later when the Lord identifies himself with the crowd's need for food and the disciples tell him: send them away and let them buy food elsewhere.

But I always see that compassion, that mercy that moved the Lord to go beyond the moment and that tells us something about the heart of Jesus. It is a compassionate heart, it is a merciful heart, it is a heart that takes pity on our needs and our condition.

One of my favorite verses is in Psalm 103, which says, "As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him."

Over and over again the Lord invites us to approach him with that sense of trust. We have a Father who knows that we are made of very brittle material. We are humans. That is why that same Psalm 103 says that: "He knows our condition." In English it says: "Because He knows our frame." He knows the very structure of our being, he remembers that we are dust.

The Lord knows that we are very weak and very fragile children. And he treats us that way. And we have to see the Father always seeing us that way. When we fail the Lord, when we have wanted to serve Him and have failed, let us remember that the Lord is merciful and compassionate. He never rejects one who approaches Him with a humble spirit. The Lord does not reject or despise us when we manifest our humanity or our imperfection, He always sees us with compassion, and is willing to attend to our need. Let us confidently approach the throne of grace, and we will receive timely help.