Compassion is a person, place or thing so it should be a noun but it is not just a noun. It presents as a noun, being a sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. Having sympathy is a verb because you have the noun – sympathy and have is the verb. I taught fourth-grade Language Arts and it was a stretch but I know enough to be dangerous, although I have no idea what to do with the comma’s around quotation marks. Help me somebody? I read something today on compassion by Karrie Hahn. I have been thinking about her ideas but am not looking at the piece so this is just a paraphrase of what I concluded. Compassion is three things. First – you need to see the need to feel sympathy. Second – you have to react with deep feelings about whatever struck you as misfortune. Lastly – do something. To see and feel is incomplete. If there is no result we are not compassionate but just deep feelers. Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology calls compassion a noun – that (human) disposition that fuels acts of kindness and mercy. Compassion is a form of love aroused within us when we are confronted with those who suffer or are vulnerable. It goes on to say that it produces action to alleviate suffering but not all can or do respond. It is often used (hamal or rachuwm) in the Old Testament to mean “showing mercy”. God’s compassion is freely given, rooted in His covenant relationship with His people and, more often than not, identifies as a familial trait. In the New Testament, Jesus shows compassion to the helpless crowd. They do not know what they are doing. Are we dumb or blind? I cry at commercials but I don’t interact with the story. We are moved because we are made in the image of God who is all compassion.
