“We want to live well, but our foremost efforts should be to help others live well.” (1 Corinthians 10:24 MSG).

 

     Jo Cameron cannot feel her skin burning until she smells the singed flesh. She often burns her arms on the oven yet does not experience discomfort. Jo is one of two people in the world who are known to have a rare genetic mutation that causes insensitivity to pain.

    People who have this congenital condition cannot feel the difference between hot and cold or sharp or dull sensations. They are unaware when a hot beverage is burning their tongue.  The absence of pain often causes severe wounds, broken bones, and other serious health conditions.   

 Jo Cameron’s particular condition also dulls her sense of empathy to the  emotional pain other people may experience. Recently, Jo was in a car accident yet felt indifferent toward the driver of the other car who was shaken by what had happened. Jo’s incapacity to sense the other person’s distress prevented her from displaying any form of compassion whatsoever.  

     However, Paul asserts the Christian community should operate differently. He insists that “our foremost efforts should be to help others live well.” God does not ask us to neglect our own needs. He does, however, expect to consider the needs of others ahead of our own.

 

     I often think about the words a former parishioner who expressed human compassion this way. “When one of us gets cut we all bleed.” This is one person’s idiomatic way of saying that I feel your pain. May his tribe increase!

 

      Yet to those who negatively stigmatize empathetic souls as “bleeding hearts,”I offer this reminder. God Himself bled for the sake of saving the world.  And if bleeding for others is good enough for God, then it should be a good example for all  of us to follow.

 

In the beloved hymn, Alas and Did My Saviour Bleed, Issac Watts, penned the following words:

 

Thus might I hide my blushing face