Day 42: Compassion Fatigued

"Very often [it] is the result of the feeling that, no matter what we do, it is ineffectual." (Susan Moeller)

It's called compassion fatigue.

I'm sure we all feel it at some point. I know I do. It's overwhelming to think of the depth of need in my own city, much less around the world. And when I stop to pray for the poor and needy, sometimes I sit in silence, overwhelmed and not knowing where to begin.

Need is everywhere. We see it through the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, Christian Children's Fund, Make-A-Wish, Habitat for Humanity. It comes through our mailboxes, our telephones, our TVs. Even the sidebar of this blog shows poor children in need.

Remember the song "Feed the World"?

I was just being born as this song was being recorded. Still, most in my generation know it. The almost 50 artists who joined to record it formed the charity group Band Aid.


Here are some of the lyrics:
And the Christmas bells that ring there
are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it's them
instead of you
Heavy.

So what's a person to do? I feel overwhelmed (and even more guilty), yet I don't know what to do that could make any real impact. I'm feeling the compassion fatigue.

John Piper, in his book A Hunger for God, makes a helpful observation on this. He writes:

"I do believe that the more relational our care for the poor can be, the better. But it would be wooden and unchristlike to say that all care short of bringing the homeless into our own home is hypocritical. That may be what we should do in some cases, but not necessarily in all. And it is often an all-or-nothing attitude that paralyzes God's people."

I realize now that while feeding the world is impossible for me, the "simple" things do matter:

• I can ask the lady who mops the floors in my school Union building her name and how she's doing.
• I can not avert my eyes and make the wide semicircle to avoid the homeless man, but smile nicely at him instead.
• Instead of throwing away my old gloves, I can give them to a charity group.
• I can fight my thinking that the lady in front of me in the grocery line with foodstamps is just using the system, and silently pray for her right there.

As Piper notes, "Do not be paralyzed by the statistics. We are not responsible for what we cannot do but for what we can do."

That helps relieve some of the fatigue. Otherwise, my compassion begins to slowly fade.