Compassion That Never Fails

It has been a disjointed week. My thoughts have resisted any attempts at organization, they have become ungovernable. This tends to happen to me in moments of upheaval and confusion, and nothing is as confusing, nothing produces more upheaval than war. Images of charred and smoldering buildings are jarring. Pictures of exhausted refugees, their faces etched with fear and anger do the mighty work of transforming your own troubles into trivialities, nothing more than unserious annoyances. Suddenly, being asked to wear a mask for five minutes seems like something you can’t believe we were petty enough to fight about just a few weeks ago. You see a picture of some old man kneeling in front of a column of Russian tanks outside of Kharkiv and you feel like a pampered coward for bitching about having to pay 4 bucks for a gallon of gas. Perhaps the dividing line between real problems and fake ones comes at the end of the barrel of an AK-47.

In the midst of all this upheaval, my 90 day read through the Bible brings me here this morning, to the obscure book of Lamentations where I read this:

“It is because of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, Because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: Great is thy faithfulness”

Ironic, I think, to read such a beautiful verse at a time of such ugliness. In the midst of my confusion I wonder where God’s famous mercies are for the people of Ukraine? Then I think of the unprecedented outpouring of support for the Ukrainian people that has spread over the globe in the last ten days. I see the video of the airport terminal in Berlin where German citizens descended, carrying signs offering one, two, even three bedrooms of their homes for Ukrainian refugees who they had never met. I see this transforming of the human heart, this extension of mercy for the stranger, the foreigner received with kindness and these verses come alive. They give me renewed hope that the best, the most tender mercies, can be drawn out of our cold hearts at the worst possible time. Sometimes we need to stare evil straight in the face in order to be stirred out of our complacent self-obsession. Thanks largely to the internet and the instantaneous, unfiltered images that come with it, the war in Ukraine is reminding us that modern man with all of our juvenile assumptions and modern sensitivities has not revoked human nature. We are still children of wrath. We are still consumed by jealousy, envy, selfishness and pride. What hasn’t changed in the brave old world of the 21st century is the Lord’s mercies. They are still new every morning. They still never fail. He is still faithful.

If only we were. If only our compassions never failed.