Choose Compassion

28 Sep Choose Compassion

Read  Mark 6:30-34
Thought for the Day: Jesus shows us what it means to lead.

When I was growing up in the mid-90s, my friends and I loved the children’s movie The Mighty Ducks. As a child, I enjoyed the slapstick humor and underdog story. I only saw the movie as the story of Charlie Conway, a kid who faces challenges and grows into becoming the star of his peewee hockey team. Twenty years later, I have gone back and watched the film with a new perspective as I am no longer the age of the hockey players but am the age of coach Gordon Bombay.

Coach Bombay is a burnt-out ex-hockey player who is forced to coach a winless peewee hockey team full of misfits in order to fulfill a community service requirement. Rather than embracing his role and seeing that his kids need a leader, he lets them know in his opening speech: “Now here’s the long and the short of it: I hate hockey and I don’t like kids.” Ultimately, Coach Bombay leads his team to a championship against unlikely odds. But first, he comes to terms with the fact that his players need a coach who genuinely cares for each of them.

Throughout His ministry, Jesus encountered misfits but He began with an entirely different perspective. Before He fed the 5000, “He saw a great crowd, and He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And He began to teach them many things.”

Too often, we find ourselves in positions where we default to Coach Bombay’s mindset of Coach Conway rather than owning our roles. Like Jesus showed up, people are in need of a shepherd. Compassion is necessary, but let’s remember that we don’t need to have all the answers nor do we need to be perfect. We don’t need to fix others, but we always need to love and care for others. Period.

In Christ,
Pastor David (and Stan)