The story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:33) is very well known. The point is that it is not enough to feel sorry for someone. Such feeling must result in positive action.

For many years, it was our family custom to decide how we would celebrate Christmas dinner. One year, when we lived across the road from a hospital called the Home for Incurables, our children said, ‘Let’s invite some of the patients from the Home to have Christmas dinner with us.’

We invited five of them and wheeled them one by one across the road into our house.

I shall never forget what 14-year-old Rebekah did at that meal table. She spent the whole time feeding a lass who was unable to fend for herself. This girl had great difficulties and made quite a mess. Becky hardly got a thing to eat herself.

But her concern for the disabled girl was such that she gladly did what she did, and brought joy and encouragement to a girl who would otherwise have had a very lonely time that Christmas.

True compassion readily accepts a person. There is no standoffishness about it. A deep feeling of love results in an open show of affection and total acceptance.

To read more on this topic see Living in the Image of God, Barry Chant (Miranda: Tabor, 2012 available in eBook and Paperback) from which this edited extract is taken.