Some years take more out of us than others. 2025 is one of those years.
Loss piles on top of disappointment, and the weight of uncertainty makes it hard to catch our breath. Maybe that’s where you find yourself right now — grieving what was, anxious about what is, unsure of what’s ahead.
This season has been heavy for many of us, not only because of the personal struggles we each carry, but also because of the collective ache woven into our communities and world. It’s a lot to process. And when life feels perpetually marred by grief and loss, it can be hard to know how to keep showing up with hope, much less love.
How do we manage the upheavals in our personal worlds when the actual world we live in seems to have turned upside down?
Yesterday, I spoke with a young woman navigating conflict in her workplace. The details don’t matter, but suffice it to say her office environment has become increasingly hostile over the past year, with much of the hostility directed toward her. Lately, she has lost her characteristic optimism, and she’s struggling to hold on to hope.
That’s when we began discussing empathy.
“I want you to do something for me,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows, waiting for me to continue.
“I want you to practice empathy.”
She then looked at me as if I’d sprouted three heads.
“I know, I know,” I smiled and nodded. “That’s the last thing you want to do. You have every right to be angry. What they did is wrong, and they don’t deserve your kindness.”
It’s true. They didn’t deserve it. But that wasn’t really the point.
“Here’s the thing. I believe part of the reason they behave horribly is because they lack empathy. They don’t see the people around them as human beings with innate dignity and worth. Including you.”
I paused, giving her a moment to process.
“You could certainly do the same, treat them the way they treat you. It might even feel good for a moment.” We laughed, knowing the truth of it.
“But,” I reminded us both, “the person impacted the most will be you, not them. You’ll become exactly what they are.”
That’s when it hit me: Our upside-down world needs more empathy. The hostility is untenable. We’re losing our hold on hope. And at least part of the reason is that we’ve stopped seeing each other as humans with innate dignity and worth. Instead, we see each other as unrecognizable animals, obstacles to our own agendas. In the process, we’ve become animals ourselves.
Empathy, by definition, is the ability to recognize and step into the feelings of another. It comes from the Greek word empatheia — em translated as “in” and pathos as “feeling.” When we intentionally place ourselves “in feeling” with another person, we begin to experience their reality as our own. We understand a bit more about what they think, how they feel, and why they behave as they do. As a result, we gain a perspective that often leads to compassion and kindness.
Empathy may not change the hostile person, but it will keep you and me from becoming the same.
In his letter to the church in Colossae, Paul encouraged the believers to draw from the limitless well of God’s love when they need more empathy:
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.“
Colossians 3:12-14 (NIV)
My friends, you and I are chosen, holy, dearly loved, and forgiven. We have a God who, through Jesus, stepped “in feeling” with us. Becoming fully human, He experienced what you and I experience so that we would never, never be alone.
Now, with such love poured out on us, how can we not do the same?
Every day, we will witness people behaving poorly and encounter others we don’t understand. The temptation when we see and receive such hostility and disrespect is to armor up, shut down, and become equally hostile and disrespectful. But doing so will only make us more like animals and less like Jesus.
Instead, let’s lean into empathy, the superpower of the heart. As we step “in feeling” with others, seeing them the way Jesus sees them, we will infuse our world with much-needed compassion and kindness.
And we’ll find a way to hold on to hope.
What safe perspective! Blessings! (((0)))
Ugh, My spelling gets worse every day I meant to type SAGE as in wise, thoughtful & practical!
Hahaha SAME! All good, friend. Grateful for you.
I am a retired school counselor. So many of my class lessons revolved around empathy. I believe you have said it well- this world needs more empathy. We need to do a better job of understanding each other. And listening! Thank you for your insightful post today.
Bless you for the way you served students for so many years. Grateful for your faithfulness and YOUR empathy, sister.
Thank you for this really needed reminder for ALL of us. I know I really needed it. YES more empathy. We all want to be more like Jesus.
Yes, yes, yes. Thank you, Sharon.
So true! The work place can be such a “hot mess”! Thank you Michele for this reminder.
If I remember that I can choose to do and act and respond, kindly, quieter, peacefully the day may unfold with a bit more harmony. It can start with me….\0/
Yes, precisely, Janet. Although empathy can impact the people around me, the real aim is that it changes me. Like you said, it starts with us.
Good Morning Michele………………Really nice to see a devotional written by you. It is really interesting. My dark season continues although there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Jesus and my Holy Spirit have helped me to know how to deal with my ex-husband, son, his wife and my sister and the reason why they hate me I found out that it is because I am a Christian. That shocked me to the core. I have had no communication with my one grandchild who today he is 15 years old. I saw him last when he was 11. His parents destroy every card or gift I send and trash it before he gets home from school. I don’t know how to show empathy to them; however I have asked Jesus if I could place my burdens at His feet and He indicted that it was fine. I have found some peace now about all the adults and how much they have hurt me over the past 5 years and I am 78 years old. It has been really difficult as each year passes, but I know that at some point something good will come. Today I know will be a hard day for me, but I must remember I still have hope and they are not going to destroy my faith just because they think I belong in a mental institution. The other thing is, the Senior Living Facility I live in is supposed to be Independent Living and it is not. We have so many residents who are lost all the time or don’t like the way I dress so none of them will talk to me. I have tried, but they should be in another facility where they could get care. There is no care here. I have managed to make friends with maybe 10 people out of 100 residents that live here so I continue to help them and they seem to really see the REAL me. I really am trying every day to be more like Jesus. I have always been a generous, kind person, but when they judge me for the clothes I wear, there is nothing I can do about that. I believe in empathy, Michele and I learned more about it from your wise words. There is a new facility opening early next year which truly is what it should be. I pray that I can be chosen for one of their apartments and I feel that this is what will bring me joy and peace and help me be the same person I have always been. Thank you for your devotion today and if you have any advice for me, please share it with me. Could you say a prayer for me. I send my love and prayers to you for all that the (in ) courage community of women who help those of us that face so many roadblocks that sometimes we lose our way…………………..Betsy Basile
God bless and build you up in Him Betsy. How wonderful that you have found 10 welcoming people! Pray for their receptivity to God’s Word and remember that
Light dispels darkness. Have some fun with them no matter what the others are up to and who cares what people think of your wardrobe if you’re contented with it. Who knows if they’re just jealous of you because you have some joy in your life, keep spreading it today! Think of something nice to say to whomever you meet and pray for them too, you have power over that and it might touch their hearts one day. It will certainly lift yours, while you’re there. Place that in God’s hands, He’s got you. You are Light in their lives! God really does have purpose for you in this time and place, although it sounds like a lot to navigate along with the sad lack of respect and love from your family as well. Your strength is in Christ and God in Christ dwells in you, so you are never alone. Praying with you that God opens the doors to your better home.
Good to hear from you, my friend. You always bring such a warm heart and positive spirit to our “table” here. Grateful for you! And yes, I’m praying over you today. Not alone.
Excellent advise, wisdom full
Thank you Michele
This empathy suggestion is a fuzzy trail, outside of the family of God, and deserves discernment. Certain ways of thinking are not broachable by “empathy”, because for a believer in Christ Jesus, madness and brainwashed thinking hold nothing to attempt to empathize with. God by His spirit in us can give us spiritual insight into others as needed but that’s not empathy. Only by walking by God’s spirit with wisdom motivated by the pure love of God in Christ Jesus can we transcend the darkness that is being perpetrated and spewd. My “feelings” trying to feel what people in darkness are feeling toward me in the light isn’t where our power lies, and I cannot try to go there. Light has no fellowship with darkness. Our peace and power lay in and flow from our steadfastness in Christ, which encompasses the fruit of the spirit being manifest in our lives toward all we encounter because we are a reflection of Christ, not because we attempt to empathize with those in darkness. I’ve experienced the absolute fury of those in darkness in the workplace when I’d walked in grace and the love of Christ toward them, and have simultaneously seen others drawn to that light. While courteousness and respect are qualities of professionalism in the workplace, it’s not in our own power of emotions and nice treatment of others, but in Christ’s power alone that we walk and see the victory. Those who hate God and the Light will hate us the more, and those whom God touches by our grace and kindness will be drawn to us. We must remember that the focus of their rejection is God, not just us. Through prayer let Him fight our battles. Putting on the whole armor of God is where it’s at, so that having done all, we stand faithful.
I realized a few years ago that the in the “pearls before swine” metaphor in the Sermon on the Mount: of *course* the pigs are going to be unimpressed! They’re expecting that anyone who tosses things into their pen will be giving them food, something that smells good and they can munch; pearls are not food, they don’t know what pearls are, they can’t do anything with them, they don’t know what good this could be. They do not yet have a capability to “get it” and from where they’re coming from, this makes sense. Doesn’t make the pearls any less valuable! Doesn’t make the swine any less valuable; but it does turn their rejection of your good things from something personal that might be hard to not hate them for into a “well. That’s where they are right now. I hope they get to somewhere better and until then I’ll stop tossing my pearls that direction.”
All the human beings are human beings made in the image of God and loved by God, no matter what space of darkness they’re coming from or what demons are steering the ship at the moment. They’re not all going to respond to us well, even if we do exactly the right things (… although some of them will respond to us better if we behave towards them with actual love), but if we remember how Jesus values those who “were yet sinners”, it helps expand us. Obviously, understanding where they’re coming from is not the same as saying that where they are is Fine and Okay; Corrie Ten Boom’s sister’s compassion on the nazi guards being especially brutal to the mentally retarded, saying that those guards would need extra help to recover from this after it was all over, was not in any way saying their brutality was acceptable, just recognizing that those who brutalize innocent human beings, smashing them into the ground without provocation, do in fact need a whoooole lot of healing to get to where Christ wants them to be. (if Corrie’s sister had been in a position to restrain the guards, I’m guessing she would have restrained them, though! not “love your enemies” to the point of do-nothing, but to the point of seeing them differently in your heart)(I read The Hiding Place for the first time a few years ago in book group and would strongly recommend it as a challenging book and a useful book at this time)
But, contrary to the display of empathy, Christ had a lot of words for those who put burdens in the way of others – those who thought they were the top of the heap, religiously, and who hated their enemies and who scorned anyone ‘below’ themselves and loaded people down with burdens too heavy to carry and then wouldn’t help them with how to carry those burdens. There is not much “I understand where you’re coming from” there from Jesus – but also I think the point is to shock them into seeing themselves clearly, which they should be intellectually equipped to do if their sanctimonious shield can be cracked just once? And to help others not imitate them… Perhaps similarly, judging and disciplining those who claim to be Christian pops up later in the New Testament, when people within the church are not following the laws of love.
But understanding why people are doing what they’re doing – and realizing that we might want to do something similar if we were in their position with their temptations and their history and the influences that are around them – can help us continue to view our own sins clearly rather than being more self-righteously shocked at other people’s sins and letting that perspective shrink our own sins – which are our business more than their sins are our business! – out of our sight.
Anyway, I think empathy – an understanding of why someone is where they are – can help us love our enemies without pretending they’re not sinning (per Corrie Ten Boom’s sister at least; Corrie Ten Boom did… not… get all the way to loving her enemies at that time by her reports; I’m also not there, but it does legitimately help me get closer to seeing brutal people who rip children from their parents and laugh as human beings who need God’s redemption rather than impossible to redeem). Finding out where they’re coming from can also help us interact with people in a more loving way, if we know where their sore spots are and don’t elbow those sore spots without reason. But a squishy “oh, well, if you have motivations for what you’re doing then what you’re doing is totally fine” thing, which is a solid gallop downhill away from empathy, would be a problem!
But yes, the center is how Jesus feels about all the human beings in darkness – Christ demonstrated his own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us; the Sermon on the Mount orders us to love our enemies and not fight them for our *own* ‘rights’ anyway; God so loved the world that he gave his only son; God wants all men to be saved per Romans. There is no human being alive who is ‘safe’ for Christians to hate and loathe and consider beyond the reach of salvation (although I flunk that assignment disastrously with some of the current humans on the earth, and I don’t really think the fact that some of them occasionally claim to be Christians and therefore might fall within the ‘do not even eat with such a one’ purview is an actually acceptable reason for me to loathe anyone from a distance).
Anyway, empathy, along with having a morning quiet time and using index cards to keep track of prayer requests and taking a social media fast and various other things: a great tool if it’s kept as a tool, and a potentially-destructive thing if it’s turned into an idol. But nothing in this devotional suggests to me that it’s being turned into an idol. 🙂 (but different experiences can make us more sensitive about different things, and that can be a strength within the diversity of the body of Christ even as it complicates communication sometimes!)
Thank you for this! It was good to hear. (And I needed the reminder that it’s not safe for a Christian to hate any one of their human enemies, even under the cover of hating darkness or hating evil or hating disinformation or hating brutality; any particular human, at least those still alive, may yet repent and be redeemed by Christ’s blood, even now.)
Dearest Michele,
Our adult son who lives in his car teaches us daily about empathy.
When I wake up from my warm soft bed, he wakes up from sleeping in his car with a sleeping bag wrapped up around him like a burrito. When I can go to my bathroom and take a shower, take care of my personal life, he must find a bathroom in a gas station to get cleaned up for work. When I can go into my kitchen for a hearty breakfast, he has to find a restaurant or gas station for coffee and what ever he can eat at a grocery store that doesn’t require heating. This is just a small picture of the life of a homeless man who indeed works. He suffers from mental health issues that have plagued him for decades.
Yup! I have more empathy in my back pocket now than ever. One more thing, the employees love him because even though he is homeless, on payday he’ll bring in pastries for the staff! Seriously thoughtful man our son is.
Michele,
God bless you, it is such a pleasure to read your devotion podcast by choose more empathy toward another human.
Michelle,
My God given talent is empathy & encouragement. A few weeks ago a patient’s family member was sobbing loudly in the room. When I got there she said her sister had just died. I called for chaplain & we took her to the chapel. She was able to cry, call family friends & calm down. I stayed with her the whole time. Even walked her out to elevator. She thanked me.
Most days at work I talk with patients & families. Tell them I’m praying for them. They see me as someone who cares & is willing to help in any way. I can do it cause I’ve been in their shoes when caregiving for my parents.
Blessings 🙂