Pilgrim-progress - This is me talking. No scripture, no arguments. Human being to human being.
I'm the same age as you. I've had 23 years of life. I've walked different ways, I've travelled a lot of roads, not all of which have been pleasant, beneficial, helpful, kind, compassionate, useful or Godly. I, like everyone else, have suffered loss. From the day that I was born, I was immersed in an imperfect world; a world of contradictions, broken hopes, dreams that fade, cynics, depravity, moral unfaithfullness, cruelty, injustice, intolerance, oppression and hatred.
I've eaten many bad apples and very nearly become one.
From the day I could recognize what death was, I, like you, have had to deal with the impending meeting between me and my own mortality. I've struggled with half-truths, sly lies and bad people. I've gone through long periods of searching for conclusions and epiphanies about the world that never came; for explanations of the countless errors, injustices and imbalances that I perceived in the world.
I've pitted myself against things, for many reasons, many of them aimless, drifting, fleeting ones. I've aligned myself with people, ideas, meanings and illusions just so that I could fit in. i've approximated my beliefs, then solidified them, then found that one day they have dissolved, and I'm left dissolute and dispirited.
I've wracked my brain in search of things to live for. Even in Jesus, for a lot of years I found myself feeling obliged in law, but never desirous in heart. I've tested the boundaries and restraints of what's socially acceptable in belief, belief of many forms, and I've probed the limits of what is linguistically, intellectually and spiritually possible in them.
And I came to one indisputable, definite, incontestable, incontrovertible truth about the meaning of my life, a stronghold, universally applicable to any point of my life, any time, place, situation or moment.
I am finite. I am stuck. I am the present. And it is ALL that I have to work with. The present moment. It renews itself, now, and now, and now. Without it, I do not exist in mortal life. Thus, as far as I have the ability, it benefits me, in this present moment, to think with compassion, for if I don't think with compassion in this present moment, then when shall I? Shall I decide which moments I will, and which moments I won't? Or should I anchor myself there, learning this way of thinking, making it my betterment?
From this realization, came the realization that the present moment is all that others have. Others face the same desire; the future. money, success, fame, glory. Others strive to control, when letting go and living now is more freeing than I ever could have imagined.
Of course, my struggles remain, but in my heart, focusing myself to compassion, I needn't fear my mistakes, or the past. it is already gone. Why dwell? I have a NEW moment to make a difference. And the future? It can't be seen, it can't be taken hold of. So why try? When I have now, to make now better?
As Jesus says, 'adopt the Lord you God in all your intent, your person and your intellect, and have compassion for others as though they are you.
I've begun to understand Jesus; the purpose, the message.
And this compassion, I can assure you, is the only manner in which the spirit in me can ever be seen, believed, heard or wanted by anyone whom I come across. I cannot do more, for God, than to have compassion for others in each moment. And he asks no more than that of me.
I bear my cross in doing this; for compassion is the trait of self-sacrifice. And though I don't always succeed, I'm sure that failure with the right motive is more acceptable than success with the wrong one.
