in medias res

I've been thinking a lot about the whole concept of story lately, both in terms of its power to move us beyond what the mere acquisition of information does, and as a way of understanding our roles in the grander scheme of all that God has planned in a very broad and eternal sense. Drilling down into the finer points of individual stories is vital; I think it could be said that the entire point of the gospel is compassion: both God's compassion toward us as manifested in the life of Christ and our compassion for other people regardless of any category or judgment we could assign them.

Compassion and story go hand in hand; unlike sympathy or even empathy, compassion means to suffer with someone (com- being a prefix meaning "with" or "together" , and the word pathos meaning "suffering"). Compassion requires the one who extends it to suffer alongside. And how are we to suffer with others unless we know the particulars of their stories: to know their wounds as we know our own, and to bear a burden of desire to relieve it? It's not a far stretch to conclude that Christ embodies this definition of suffering with in all its particulars, not only in His final and ultimate act of suffering, but also in the mundane: leaving the unimaginable splendor of heaven for the filth and stink and flesh of earth. God took on flesh and dirt under the fingernails, stomachaches and splinters, hunger and fatigue.

As someone who has only recently snapped the tether that held her heart, I can hardly be considered an authority in this regard. There is no soapbox for me to stand on or pulpit behind which I will posture myself. Perhaps it's because I'm feeling things so keenly and seeing them so freshly now that I've been blinded by the truth of it. The stone walls I hid behind are crumbled and still crumbling. As I walk through the ruins and kick these stones over, I consider how they performed a function I never consciously intended. No doubt they protected me from pain. But they also prevented me from being present for the pain of others. They walled me in, distant from joy and from full engagement in my own life. As a new friend recently stated, I was safe but ultimately unsatisfied. I was hedged in, protected against that which was bad or hurtful and also that which was good and joyful.

Relatively little is written about Christ's everyday life on earth, but I can imagine that not every day was one in which tables were turned, masses were fed from a sacklunch, or men were raised from the dead. Especially in the thirty years that preceded the advent of His active ministry, we can likely infer that there had to have been plenty of the mundane: meals around a shared table, stomachaches and headcolds, building tables and chairs, thatching rooves. Jesus came for that, too: He left heaven and emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant, subjecting Himself to our everyday -- in fact, to what is sometimes our mundane, mediocre, and quotidian existence.

It occurs to me that exercising compassion does not require that we go out of our way to seek out the person who is hurting the most, or that we attempt to insert ourselves into the stories unfolding in hospital rooms, prisons, or on the five o'clock news (though for some, it may very well include this). We are called, I believe, to come alongside those whose paths intersect with ours daily: co-workers, baristas, roommates, siblings, and spouses; to walk beside, to hold a hand, offer a shoulder, to be open arms. To listen, to ask, to laugh with. To offer what we have: an open door, a car, a shower, a bed; to get out of the way so the love of God can flow through us, inserting itself into our everydays and the everydays of those around us.

When we lock ourselves in that dragon-guarded castle, walling ourselves in as a spontaneous response to our own pain, we cut ourselves off not only from unwanted intrusions, but from love and goodness and laughter as well. We cut off the means by which we can offer ourselves to those who may be moving through the very pain we've reacted against. This is a response I know well. But now I've lowered the drawbridge, crossed the moat, and circle the stronghold I once called home. Looking away from my pile of stones, I discover a lush landscape teeming with life, a horizon that extends into eternity. This is where life is.

But as long as this remains a pretty philosophy, as long as my day-to-day interactions fail to mirror these words, they are only words hanging in space. Like the apostle Paul said:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

It does not matter what I know or what I write; it does not matter if I can wow a reader or impress a publisher or have a hundred by-lines to my credit. God cares more about me serving my roommates, listening to and assisting my co-workers, celebrating with my friends in their successes and crying with them in their heartaches. In short, He wants me to be a vessel for His compassion, to be the fitting word that agrees with the story He is telling.

Our stories matter individually, but more as threads woven into the great fabric of compassion and redemption that He has been weaving since time began. Our own stories begin in medias res in relation to His own, and we have the opportunity to echo this when we walk alongside others every day. Will I be the stray thread, or will I allow myself to be inserted into the fabric of a story He began so long ago?