Moved With Compassion

There may be a face you pass on the same street twice a day, and you have your reasons for not looking at it. Some of them are good reasons. You gave something last month, and you never carry cash.

Matthew uses a body word for what happened inside Jesus when He saw the crowds. The Greek verb comes from splagchna, the inner organs, which is where people in that world said they felt their deepest feelings. It is a rare word. In the Gospels it is used of Jesus, and apart from Him only of three men in three of His parables, and each of them shows us something of God's own heart. There is the father who saw his son "when he was yet a great way off," the Samaritan on the road, and the king who forgave his servant the debt.

Matthew tells us exactly what moved Him: "because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd." That phrase has a history. Near the end of his life, Moses asked God to set a man over the people, "that the congregation of the LORD be not as sheep which have no shepherd." Later the prophet Micaiah told a king, "I saw all Israel scattered upon the hills, as sheep that have not a shepherd." Both times the phrase describes a people left without the leader God meant them to have. Now Jesus looks at a crowd with plenty of religious leaders over it, and He sees sheep with nobody caring for them.

One instruction comes with the feeling, and it is small enough to do before you leave the house: "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest." Pray that about the face on your street. Then read on into the next chapter, where Jesus calls His twelve disciples and sends them out. The men He told to pray for workers became the answer to their own prayer. So be ready, because the Lord of the harvest still answers that prayer, and He may send you.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 199 is Rejoice and Shout for Joy (Psalm 5:11).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two