Would you rather hang out with someone who acts compassionately towards you, who genuinely desires to see you grow and flourish?

Or someone who is out for themselves, who selfishly schemes and postures to get ahead?

Guest Writer: my husband, Justin Bradbury

We speak of poor connectivity when our technology coverage is threatened. More patchy, still, can be our human relationships and our true-worth relationship with God and ourselves. Instability and insecurity stalk us by our own consent. Technology is both a boon and a threat in our hands. Social media is making us less social, more flimsily connected and isolated from each  other.

God’s image doesn’t exist solely in the man alone or the woman alone. But, fully, in the woman and man together. United.

It’s easy for us to daydream, isn’t it? God, on the other hand, is not a daydreamer. He creates visions.

To believe God for something significant can feel foolish. Especially when we see no movement. Or the circumstances actually seem to be going in the opposite direction of the desire.

Offense is at the heart of our world events at the moment. It is screaming out in conversations about the Middle East. Yelling for a reaction. Crying out for people to take sides. Insisting on a reaction and revenge.

Panic, like fear, grips us with such a fierce stranglehold that it often alters the way we think, act, and feel.

At the heart of shame and hiding is the bitter effect of fear.

And fear is poisonous, isn’t it?

Since God never hesitates or hides from us relationally, but instead, always pursues us and continually speaks to us, what does He say? Think about it personally, what’s been your experience of listening to His voice of love this past week?

Does God hesitate relationally with us? Drag His feet? Stall? Stay back? Hide?

In other words, is He like us in relationships? If not, then what is He like?

When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” (Gen 3:8-9, NLT).

Hope is one of those words in our culture that is essentially meaningless. It’s often used to project a good feeling or a wishful outcome. The aspiration is baseless. Not rooted in anything other than human sentiment. On its own, this hope can’t deliver, no matter how well-meaning it is. Therefore, some of us end up believing our lives are left to some whim of fate or cosmic force.

Difficulty often brings disorientation. Questions. Wonderings. Sometimes our thoughts are in conflict with related emotions. At other times, they are in conflict with unrelated ones. Either way, our disorientation can cause us to feel like we’re swirling out of control. We might wonder where God is and what He’s doing. Does He still rescue?

It’s true, Jesus is not inviting us into something that requires us to do any-thing, but to experience Him. To be with Him. To spend time with Him. Not to accomplish anything. Or to achieve. Or worse, to strive to be someone or something we’re not. He’s simply inviting us to be with Him.

In Greek, kindness means God’s “affection,” “generosity,” “gentle-ness,” and “goodness.” Can you imagine God relating to you like this?

What does the compassion of God look like in action? How does it sound?