Ultimate isolation;  This is the culmination of the passion of the Christ. Passion comes from the Latin word 'pati', which means "to suffer."  So, compassion comes from the Latin 'com' plus 'pati'--"to suffer with." This is God wanting to experience human loneliness, the greatest suffering that a human can experience. The compassion of Christ. Ask any homeless person what the most difficult part of being homeless is. It's not hunger. It's not sleep deprivation. It's not bug bites or infection. The single most difficult part of being homeless is loneliness. No one knowing your name. The way people look at you. Dying on the street and both your life and death going wholly unnoticed.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 The Meriam-Webster dictionary definition of compassion is "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it."   The reason God created us is rooted in relationship. The reason we exist in this world- shoulder to shoulder with millions of other human beings is relationship. And yet we still give our brothers and sisters what we think they need. It's not a job. It's not a house. It's not a car. It's the abundant love of Jesus Christ. That love is so abundant that it flows through you and calls you to be abundant too--to help provide the things like jobs and houses that they need to survive.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                I think it's time now that you and I change the way people view how we are to serve people--that it's not with an attitude that says, "Here's your need. Here's your meal unit. Here's your cot." but rather, it starts with you and I participating--not with our checkbooks, but with our lives. Allowing our threads to be so intertwined that their suffering is our suffering. It's with our relationships and our willingness to befriend another human being. It's with love. Remember that Communion without sacrificial love is just bread and wine. Don't just give the homeless a handout--give them your hand.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          "Welcome Homeless"  A book by Alan Graham and Lauren Hall  "One Man's Journey of Discovering the Meaning of Home"