Advent 2015 Post, December 5
Advent is about the big picture. It is not about our individual selves, but the salvation of billions, the whole world, the whole heart of God.
And yet it is about the microcosm of the individual human experience. Microcosm is an interesting word: it means infinitesimally small, yet "cosm" mean world. Each life is a tiny version of the whole world, in a sense. Each human life reflects the life of the whole. In that sense, our tiny lives should point us to the bigger world, not deeper within ourselves.
This is the core of empathy: what I experience and feel is what others do and equips me to be of ministry to others. II Corinthians 1:3-6:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,
And yet it is about the microcosm of the individual human experience. Microcosm is an interesting word: it means infinitesimally small, yet "cosm" mean world. Each life is a tiny version of the whole world, in a sense. Each human life reflects the life of the whole. In that sense, our tiny lives should point us to the bigger world, not deeper within ourselves.
This is the core of empathy: what I experience and feel is what others do and equips me to be of ministry to others. II Corinthians 1:3-6:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,
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who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.
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For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
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If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.
And this is because of the incarnation, God with us, Emmanuel, the one who became one of us to know our suffering.
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