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The Local Face Of Compassion

The Source

My friend belongs to a church in Jacksonville and told me this ironic tale. He said that his congregation had just welcomed a new pastor and the fresh clergyman was getting the feel of the church including a review of the committees. The pastor called my friend one night and said, “You don’t have a compassion committee?” My friend said he’d never heard of a compassion committee. The preacher responded, “Every church I’ve been in has had a compassion committee. It’s group who respond to the needs of the community…you know…offers to take care of kids when the parents are called away, delivers casseroles when there’s a death, offers all sorts of help in times of need.” My buddy told him that his church had never formed such a committee and although he saw nothing against the idea, doubted the need. “Of course we have a need!” said the new pastor and immediately began drawing up plans for the C.C.C…Christian Compassion Committee. To make a long story short, the committee was formed then immediately died from disuse. It was a bust and was disbanded about as soon as it was formed. It’s not that our community lacked needy recipients or that my friend’s congregation lacked compassion…it’s just that they already had it covered. He said that every time a need would arise…a death, a sickness, a blow to some family’s finances, the local parishioners…and in fact the entire Jacksonville community, would beat them to the punch. By the time the committee saw the need and had a meeting, the grieving family was already flooded with help, with prayer, with love and attention. The C.C.C. bit the D (dust). Our part of the Illinois landscape may not be known for speed when it comes to things like building roads and passing referendums, but if a tragedy strikes your clan, you ‘d best keep the front door open because our local individuals and organizations will beat a path to your place within the hour. I’ve seen it again and again. I suppose that we’re no different from any other small community, but it seems as if we’ve been battered by an exceptionally large barrage of tragedy and death in recent months, and our area’s ability to respond has again proven itself to be both welcome and humbling. I’ve had close contact with a couple of families who’ve recently lost loved ones at a sadly early age and have witnessed some of the outpouring of love, prayers, and fried chicken. It’s beyond remarkable. The internet has sped up everything, including the response time for the sharing of condolences. A young friend of mind recently lost his mother and he told me that his family stayed up until the late hours on the night of her death, reading the outpouring of concern from his friends. You’d be hard pressed to find a weekend on which a benefit event is not being held for some family in their time of need or organization requiring a boost. In fact, how many times have you found yourself hurrying from one benevolent event to another? If a committee responds, it’ll be ad hoc, and disappear as quickly as it was formed. Although the Jacksonville area is rich with organizations designed to lend a helping hand, it’s the immediate and person-to-person compassion that provides the emotional safety net on which we’ve come to rely and expect. Whenever I read about the Quality of Life and the way it’s measured in one city versus another, the criteria are always things such as literacy rate, health care facilities, proximity to shopping malls, per capita income, and leisure time opportunities. Nearly all of these indexes use the term “emotional well-being” as the overriding yardstick. If that’s the case, then perhaps a more accurate measure of an area’s Quality of Life can be gauged by the number of casserole dishes stacked into the freezer of a grieving family, the volume of get-well notes delivered by the volunteers at Passavant Hospital, the count of cars crammed into the driveway of a family who’ve just suffered a loss, and the amount of combines lined up in a September cornfield harvesting the crop of a farmer whose family lost a father. My friend’s minister eventually moved on to another part of the state and no doubt he took with him the memory of what he learned by living around here. I hope that in his new charge he still had no need for a committee for compassion.