The Empathy Museum has a fascinating exhibit. It's called A Mile in My Shoes. Participants can put on earphones to hear the ten minute version of an immigrant's story, while also slipping on their shoes. The thing about empathy is, focus helps. Caring for an entire nation stretches the limits of our finite brains. Yes, what happened in the Holocaust is terrible. The facts about refugees at the southern border are awful. The way this
country treated the Native Americans is unconscionable. But when we know the names, and faces, and struggles of another human being striving after freedom our capacity for compassion takes off.
Which is where God comes in.
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Psalm 139
When listening to the news, the only thing that keeps me from veering off a cliff is the conviction that God cares for the people who are suffering. He created each person, with an eternal purpose in mind. One that is not erased even by the enormous wrongs inflicted by other people.
My heart has a smaller aperture. I can manage to let in a single person at a time, or in the case of the twins, two. Curiously, the volume once they are inside does not seem to press up against boundaries. No one has to exit in order for someone else to slip in.
