Compassion

You know, the closest we can come to understanding God is through Mercy.

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim.

We say the Bismillah so many times a day, and each time speak of God as the Fount of All Mercy and Ever Merciful,

and these words are at the start of almost every surah of the Qur'an.

The Qur'an says that we should call God by the Name Allah,

or Ar-Rahman the Fount of All Mercy,

but what do we mean by Mercy?

Well, it is when a person is kind and generous to someone who is in their power,

especially when that someone has done things for which they might expect punishment.

But Mercy is more than just Forgiving, though God is also the Forgiver.

We also speak of God's Mercy when we see the easing of someone's burden,

the relief of their suffering,

and those mercies are Blessings from God.

Yet why do we use two words that both mean a kind of Mercy instead of one?

There is a kind of Mercy that is given by the powerful,

and there is a kind of Mercy that is felt by everyone,

even if they are powerless.

This kind of Mercy is called Compassion,

and it is how the Fount of All Mercy interacts with the Creation.

The Fount of All Mercy has no need of Creation,

but Compassion is how humans feel the urge towards Mercy.

They can share each other's feelings.

They want to laugh when they hear someone laughing,

and they can also share the feeling of someone else's pain,

and feel the urge to ease their suffering and offer them Mercy.

We live held in God's Mercy

like a baby in its mother's belly before it is born.

The baby knows there is something outside of it,

something that makes noises

and squeezes it and moves it around,

but it doesn't understand that there is a being in which it lives,

which sees the world in which the baby lives in quite a different way.

The mother protects the unborn baby from the pains of the world by keeping it inside her body,

keeping it alive inside her by letting it share her blood

until the baby is ready to leave that world and come into this one.

In the same way God's Mercy flows through this world,

and keeps us alive until it is time for us to move on.