“I believe in the sun, though it be dark; I believe in God, though he be silent; I believe in neighborly love, though it be unable to reveal itself.” 

The quote was an inscription from an underground room where nine people lived for four months in darkness during the Holocaust. It was emergency underground housing. Reports say this underground housing contained a living room, bedroom, kitchen, radio, and small library.(June 26, 1945 Neue Zurcher)

It would not matter if the people were friends, family, or strangers. Survival in the small space would have taken creativity, patience, imagination, and hope. 

Empathy takes patience. 

It can be difficult to sit with others in their uncomfortable places. We see this with Job. His friends sit with him for a moment, but it doesn’t take long before they begin sharing how they feel. They blame Job for his current circumstances, convinced there was something he did to deserve the hard times and deaths that had fallen upon his family. It would have taken a great deal of patience and restraint to sit with Job without passing judgment about his situation. It would have taken patience to sit with him while trying to understand what he was going through and how he was feeling.

Empathy takes creativity. 

The work of understanding someone we consider “other” takes recognizing the creative hand of God not just in the world, but in ourselves. Creativity can and should take us to a place where our imaginations are at work envisioning new communities and places where we are not just seeking to understand, but where others are seeking to understand us. 

Empathy takes imagination. 

Over the years, this is one of the things I’ve seen people struggle with the most. I think it’s because empathy takes imagination. It’s not imagination like, “This is my imaginary friend,” it’s imagination that says for the moment, I’m going to attempt to walk in your shoes, knowing that it’s highly likely I won’t understand how you truly feel because we have different lived experiences. 

I confess. My lived experiences make me more sensitive to racism in the church, abuses of authority of all sorts, and the working poor. Years ago, when I was leading a session about poverty with a group of people, one person raised their hand and said, “Maybe some people deserve to be poor.” When asked to expound on what they meant, the person talked about people who chose to use their money on drugs and alcohol. The comment led us to a conversation about substance use disorders, the economy of poverty, and socio-economics; it reminded me of a time when I was teaching in a church about poverty. When the question was posed about what poverty looks like, a person blurted, “Black people.” They quickly covered their mouth in shame that they had blurted what they were thinking. It too leads to a healthy conversation about socio-economics and historic racial inequities in our communities. 

These instances served as teaching while helping to create empathy. Over the years, there have been a lot of issues, circumstances, and people  I have attempted to understand and have compassion for. Sometimes, this has been with great success. At other times,  I have failed miserably. The successes and the failures give me hope. 

Empathy takes and gives us hope. 
On the road to patience, creativity, and imagination, I’ve found hope. In both of the situations wherein it seemed empathy was lacking, tense moments led to new learning, and this learning led to increased empathy. I know these levels increased because I witnessed growth in the individuals taking part in these conversations and saw relationships transformed by these conversations. 

God is at work in the world. It is the light of Christ shining through us into the darkness. It is knowing God is present even when we struggle to see, feel, and hear the voice of God. It is knowing the Holy Spirit is at work in the world, loving us while making it possible for us to love others.