How God cured my sin.

"Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation." William Beecher

Are you compassionate? Working as a Chaplain in an inner-city Level-1 trauma center last summer was an opportunity to practice compassion. As a matter of fact, the key word for ten weeks was "compassion." I recall the young man in the emergency ward who had dislocated his shoulder while goofing-off by punching a heavy-bag display at Sears. Turns out, the bag was indeed as display and did not budge, so his shoulder gave out. His skin was decorated from the neck down in a rainbow of tattoos and his tee shirt looked like the attire of many young men who travel together in large groups.

Things are not always what they seem, are they?As I approached this man I informed him that I was a chaplain. He was in intense pain but was willing to offer up a sweet smile that revealed a huge heart underneath his body paint. I kept looking for his "boys" but realized he was alone. I sensed that he did not know what a chaplain was so I mentioned spirituality and the church. I could tell by his eyes that the light went on and he said, "Oh church! Yes."
He told me that growing up he was very poor and he and his sister never received gifts from his single-mom due to their extreme poverty. One Christmas his mother offered to take them to McDonalds for a fun-meal as their Christmas present. You should have seen his eyes as he told the story, I sensed I was in the presence of a bright-eyed nine-year old boy. He told me that as he and his sister munched on their first fun-meal ever that his mom went to the restroom. He hasn’t seen her since. Turns out that his mom, due to her extreme poverty and inability to care for her children, arranged for a local church to adopt her two children.

"Mister, can you help me find my mom?"

Beecher was right compassion will cure more sins than condemnation. Compassion cured sin that night—my sin. The sin that was cured was condemnation. I looked at his body and thought I knew him, I was wrong. It wasn’t until I was willing to enter the room, become present with him in his pain, and hear his story that I was able to understand what Henri Nouwen meant when he said, "Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor really is our fellow human." The only way that I will be able to do this is to enter the room,the pain and the story of another's life by practicing compassion, never condemnation.