Wouldn’t it be nice sometimes if we could just disappear? All the worries, anxieties, everything that plagues us… if only we could find a little corner of the world where it wouldn’t follow us. A deserted place; somewhere devoid of all that we fear, inside and outside of us.

Sadly, no such place exists. When we leave our problems behind, they don’t disappear. They just wait for us to come back. We run from them. We push them out of our minds. We ignore them. But they don’t go away.

Notice what Jesus does: he has compassion. Compassion literally means to suffer with. And to suffer with something is to go so far in the acknowledgement of its existence that you are literally willing to feel its pain. It's an act of acceptance. It’s the most radical kind of welcome. We say, Yes, you make me uncomfortable, you bring me pain, but I choose to welcome you, to give you a place to sit next to me, to speak your truth.

By Tim Moore from D365