"Compassion is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pity for those who fail to make it in the upward pull. On the contrary compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there."
How beautiful those words are and how accurately Katie Davis has lived them out, and continues to do so. She didn't learn about the countless orphans in Uganda and decide to send money to an orphanage. She didn't see a man struggling with alcoholism and decide to volunteer some of her time at a treatment center. She didn't hear stories about people with no food and decide to donate canned goods to a food pantry.
No.
She learned about the countless orphans in Uganda and adopted thirteen lovely girls who have become her daughters, showing them just how much they are worth...the body of Christ broken and the blood of Christ poured out for them. She saw a man struggling with alcoholism and invited him into her home, helping him detox, showing him that someone cared for him and breathing purpose into his life with every word spoken of the God who could heal him from the battle raging inside him. She heard stories about people with no food and went to them, giving them her own food so that they may have the strength to live a little longer and with a little less pain.
Katie Davis truly doesn't offer fake compassion...she's the real deal. She made a home in Uganda, among the people she now calls friends in order to give them hope of a better life and pour God's love down on them to show them that life doesn't end with one's last breath.
* * * * *
As a sit here and mull over this quote, listening to the wind howl and the rain pound on my roof, my thoughts drift to where they always seem to: the children huddled on the floor of an abandoned warehouse, chained to the walls, dreading the next time the door swings open...the girls hanging their heads in shame and despair on a street corner, popping just a few more pain killers so they won't have to feel the pain so intensely, waiting to be bought... These thoughts seem to live in my head, constantly plaguing me, prompting me into action.
But tonight I'm not satisfied in writing a heartfelt blog post about my passion for justice and dream of seeing the end of this atrocity. Tonight, I'm wondering what it would look like for me to "build a home there". There...in the midst of the commercial sex industry? There...on the street corner with the least of these? There...with those who take drugs to evade the constant pain they feel? There...?
How do I possibly build a home there where my heart lies? The fear of the danger that there brings paralyzes me. The fear of the unknown that there brings terrifies me.
Yet, I know that there is my calling.
How could I ever build a home there, where I know I am supposed to be?
