Mark 8 - Shared Humanity

Mark 8:2-3 has Jesus saying the following...”“I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way—and some of them have come from a great distance.” I have compassion on the crowd...Yesterday, I read this passage just after my daily meditation podcast which focused upon our shared humanity and this quote from Pema Chödrön...”Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” Jesus had compassion on the people because he understood their hunger and understood what they needed most after being with him for the preceding three days. That’s a good lesson to remember in times when we are demonizing so many others - we may not agree, we may not have the same worldview, we may not speak the same language, or follow the same faith, or have the same gender, or same orientation, or vote the same...but we do share something - we are all created in the image of God and we have a shared humanity. A little compassion goes a long way.