Repaving Roads

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that a system that produces beggars needs to be repaved. We are called to be the Good Samaritan, but after you lift so many people out of the ditch you start to think, maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be repaved."

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

I read this quote earlier this week and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

Jesus showed compassion by teaching people, feeding them, listening to them, touching them and countless other acts throughout the gospels. We are commanded to ‘put on’ compassion (Col 3:12). So what does this look like in the context that I currently find myself in? That is the question I have been wrestling with.

I want to help ‘repave the roads’ of Rehoboth. The ‘system’ here seems to have produced a lot of things, but souls filled with the life and joy of the Lord because he is seen as the treasure he is is not one of them. While I know that I will not be here long enough to see the entire road repaved, I desperately desire to be a part of laying a few bricks, that will hopefully spur a few more to do the same, and so on and so on.

So what does compassion look like? I could just give the children outside the shop here a dollar or a piece of bread or an apple. The hunger in their bellies would be temporarily satiated, but what about the hunger in their souls? In some instances, I walk away, frustrated at my lack of ability to communicate with the person… at my missed opportunity to share the bread of life with them… and I know that our interaction was not in vain, but to leave any sort of lasting impact on these people, I must be giving them something that can fill them more than just temporarily. That is the compassion I long to show to the people of Rehoboth: the compassion of Jesus, that unites acts of mercy, grace and kindness with life-giving, truth-soaked, soul-sustaining words. Please pray for wisdom and discernment, as I seek to learn how to best do that in this town.