I heard a team member this week mention the phrase "pity to passion." I began to think about that. I feel like that can be said with the poor, children, people with special needs, or just people in another culture. Anyone that has ever done a mission trip knows the feeling of seeing someone in need and thinking, "I should give them money" or " I should give them shoes, clothes, food, ETC..." The pity we often feel for others is overwhelming. It's the southern "Bless her/his heart" syndrome.
I remember my first several trips to Haiti. I had so much pity. I wanted to give anything I could to people, because in some sick way, that was supposed to help them or make their life better. It was hard to see someone at the gate that wanted something and turn them away. Pity isn't the answer. Pity tends to give way to materialistic wants.
Passion on the other hand, tends to produce meaningful relationships. It's no longer "the foreigner" but now it's "Casey." Pity causes us to see people as objects while passion causes us to see people as people. Those equal to ourselves. Passion eliminates cultural boundaries, financial differences, or race dominance. Once I was able to get past the pity view of things, I inherited a HUGE family. I have more parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, cousins, ETC... than I did before. Now we are one family in the body of Christ instead of Americans, Haitians, Africans, Hispanics, Asians. With God as our Father, and Jesus as our Savior, we are one GIANT family. We are all accepted equally, with our own quirks, annoyances, and aggravations.
People do this with their kids all the time. Kids from divoced families see this a lot. Parents will give the kids something or money to make a kid happy but as children age, is it the kid that was given "things" that is better off and has good relationships, or the kid that was loved and shown affection? The child that had a "healthy relationship" with a parent?
We must work together, cross culturally to impact the world for Jesus Christ and we must move from pity to passion!!!!!
