Faith Community CARE

Did you give or receive an Easter Egg to celebrate ‘new life’ at Easter this year?  Perhaps you keep a European tradition and boil an egg to symbolise the sealing of the tomb in which Jesus was laid after his crucifixion, and you then cracked open the egg to celebrate the life within and remember the new life you have because of Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday.  Jesus says “I am the resurrection and the life, the one who believes in me will live, even though they die…” (John 11:25, NIV). When a person freely chooses to follow Jesus, God puts his Spirit into their ‘heart’ and they become a ‘new creation’ (2 Corinthians 5:17). They receive new life NOW while they are alive, and this empowers and enables them to live a godly life that reflects Jesus’ compassionate love to others within their sphere of influence. The person also receives new life when they die. The soul leaves their body and returns to God and is given a new body and is made whole and able to live with God for eternity. This is the hope and promise confirmed by Jesus’ death and resurrection at Easter.

So what does the Bible mean when it speaks of the ‘heart’?

There are numerous answers to that question because the heart is referred to hundreds of times throughout scripture in various ways. A brief summary of the term ‘heart’ (in Hebrew ‘Leb’, in Greek ‘Kardia’) includes our physical beating heart which is the source of our life. The biblical heart includes functions of our mind including free-will, the ability to gain knowledge, to feel and respond with emotions. The human spirit enables all humans to give and receive love, and experience faith and hope. Our ‘heart’ enables our human spirit to form a relationship with God. Our human spirit is enlivened by the Spirit of God entering our ‘heart’ when we believe in Jesus Christ. We are able to discern what is right and reflect God’s compassionate love to his creation and to other people. God gives us his Spirit because he wants his followers to share his love liberally!

The most important command that Jesus Christ gave his followers while he was on earth was to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”  (Matthew 22:37-39, NIV) Sharing God’s love is not a charitable choice, nor is it ‘a nice thing to do’ if and when we feel like doing it, rather it is a commandment that followers of Jesus must obey. We can only keep that command because God’s spirit has been placed in our hearts to empower and enable us to respond and care for the whole person with God’s love.

We are whole people, made up of inseparable dimensions

We live in our body which enables us to move around and process the creation, the physical environment and its people. We have a mind that enables us to process what is happening in our body, and in our environment, and in our relationships. We are a spirit which is the animating life force breathed into human beings at the dawn of creation, enabling every person to have a relationship with God and to discern the spiritual dimension. Additionally, God’s word - the Holy Bible says we have a ‘heart’ which may be interpreted as the seat of our free will from which can make a choice to enter into a relationship with the living God. When we say ‘yes’ to God, he enables his Holy Spirit to enter our heart to enliven, inspire and help us to discern God’s way to live and to share his love.

I was reflecting on Easter and eggs when a simple visual came into my mind which is presented below. It may help to explain the whole person by using a whole egg as the representation of a person’s parts. Humans are integrated whole people and live and respond to the needs of others as whole people. When a person is distressed in one dimension of their being, it impacts their whole person. Our care is more effective when we respond holistically to the person with compassionate care that reflects God’s love for them.

Today we have had a brief and simplified explanation of what we mean by the whole person. You can explore this topic further in AFCNA’s free online 10 minute video teaching and reflection handout titled ‘Care of the Whole Person’, available from AFCNA’s online Education hub in the course ‘Compassionate Care for the Whole person’. Click here to access. It provides a taste of what we will look into when we discuss ‘Compassionate care for One Another in a 1 day workshop to be held on Friday 28^th June 2024 in the Adelaide Hills. You can find out more here and register here.

Dr Antonia van Loon RN PhD

Chairperson AFCNA

www.afcna.org.au

April 2024

Australian Faith Community Nurses Association has a specific focus each year and this year our focus is to Facilitate Compassionate Faith Community Care. Our specific biblical theme in 2024 to advance our focus is to develop fresh understanding and expression of ‘Compassion’ within our faith communities. 

AFCNA has this focus because God commands Christians to “love their neighbour” and reflect Jesus’ compassion in word and deed as they enable God’s kingdom to come on earth. (Matthew 22:36-40). We are living in a world with rising injustice, violence, environmental disasters, global pandemics, and a disturbing indifference to human suffering. This is occurring at a time when we are also experiencing increasing vulnerabilities such as loneliness, isolation, mental distress, chronic conditions, addictions, relationship breakdown, an ageing population, and care systems that are under significant pressure. People in our community are seeking compassion, hope, connection, respect, inner peace and love. Jesus came to earth to provide that peace, healing and wholeness so everyone could have an “abundant life” (John 10:10).  He has told his followers to go and do what he did (Luke 10:37) and show compassionate and loving care to people in their community.

This year AFCNA will be providing new learning opportunities via our AFCNA learning centre to equip, develop, promote and support you to live and act compassionately and carefully. We are motivated by this key verse from 1 Peter 3:8 "Be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble."  All of our learning opportunities are based upon AFCNA’s core values which are biblically-based and include:

·      LOVE the LORD your God… LOVE your NEIGHBOUR as you LOVE yourself

·      Enable STEWARDSHIP of the ‘whole health’ of individuals, communities and the creation

·      Serve with KINDNESS, show mercy, demonstrate faithfulness and trustworthiness

·      Advocate for JUSTICE, support people to have their human rights met, especially the most vulnerable

·      Seek WHOLE HEALTH, peace and wellbeing for all

·      Walk HUMBLY with God and others in their life journey, seeking transformation, healing and salvation

·      Extend COMPASSIONATE CARE TO ALL, showing generosity as we can, to whoever we can, whenever and wherever we have opportunity.

Here are a few verses that motivate and guide our focus that you might reflect upon in your own situation:

Who we are to be as followers of Jesus Christ:

·      “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” — Colossians 3:12

·      “Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.” — 1 Peter 3:8

Who God is:

·      “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us all in our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”  — 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

How we are to live as followers of Jesus Christ:

·      “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” — 1 Peter 4:10

·       “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as Christ God forgave you.” — Ephesians 4:32

·      “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”  — Micah 6:8, NIV

·       “This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’” — Zechariah 7:9-10

AFCNA really hopes that you will join us in our journey to further develop compassionate communities that improve health and wellbeing for everyone, but especially our most vulnerable people.

• Dr Antonia van Loon RN, PHD
• Chairperson AFCNA 2024

In the Bible we see God is “a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness” (Psalm 86:15). Since God is the same yesterday today and forever, his compassion will never fail - it is new every morning, as Lamentations 3:22-23 reminds us.  The Hebrew word used in Psalm 86:15 to describe God’s compassion is rakhum or as a noun rakhamim. The ‘Bible Project’ website has an excellent 5 minute word study on ‘Compassion’ which is worth viewing. It notes those two words come from the Hebrew root word for womb, rekhem. This would indicate that compassion is an inborn characteristic of the living God, and human , who are created as God’s image bearers, are also imbued with the capacity for compassion.

In Isaiah 49:15 God’s compassion for humanity is likened to the love of a nursing mother who feeds, nurtures and cares for her baby’s every need. This deep compassion for humanity’s plight leads God to physically enter our suffering world, and it is no coincidence that he is birthed via Mary’s womb, such is God’s compassion. God sends his son Jesus to become our Saviour, and to fully understand our human situation. In Jesus, God shows us how to live a just, right and compassionate life, caring for one another as his image bearers.

The Greek word for compassion is oiktirmos. Jesus compares himself to a mother hen, who gathers, shelters and protects her young under her wings as an example of his oiktirmos (compassion). Jesus models compassionate care throughout his ministry on earth, even to his death on the cross (1 Peter 2:24, Ephesians 2:13, Colossians 1:19-20). He instructs, in fact commands us, to go and do likewise (Luke 10:37).  We must allow ourselves to be moved by the suffering of others as Jesus did. We must seek to protect, nurture and enable those who are suffering, and in so doing we are able to participate in God’s redemptive plan to heal and save people from their suffering, now and for eternity. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are to “be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate.” (Luke 6:36, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Ephesians 4:32).

Biblical scholars of the Hebrew and Greek words that are translated as ‘compassion’, say it means that we are to feel a deep embodied sympathy and pity for another person’s situation, and this must move us to a merciful response.  The Greek word used in scripture is splagchnizomai, which comes from the word splagchna meaning the internal organs of our body. Therefore splagchnizomai means to be physically moved to a deep, visceral, emotional response by the situation of another person’s suffering. We express it in our common language with sayings such as, “What I heard made me sick to the pit of my stomach…”, “My heart aches for you…”, “It took my breath away…”,  “I had a gut feeling things weren’t going well…”,  and so we see that all humans can experience a visceral response to human suffering.

Splagchnizomai is the word used by Jesus in his story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). The story is of a son who asks his father for his inheritance which his father gives him. He wastes the money on wild lifestyles and loses the inheritance leaving him broke, homeless and unable to feed and clothe himself. In desperation the son returns to his father’s home ready to ask his father to let him work for him so that he might eat. When his father sees his son coming from afar, he is filled with splagchnizomai, that feeling of compassion, gut-wrenching pity, open-handed mercy, and heart-felt love. The father is compelled to respond with open arms and an open heart to meet his son’s needs, which he does with joy and without judgement or retribution. This highlights that splagchnizomai is a strong physical response to human need which moves us to decisive action. It is a ‘muscular’ compassion that calls us to engage and take deliberate action to remedy the situation for the betterment of the other!

We are living in challenging times. Human suffering surrounds us in our homes, our communities, and our nations. There is violence, war, famine, deprivation, sickness and distress all around us. We cannot ignore it if we profess to love God. “If anyone boasts, ‘I love God,’ and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both” (1 John 4:20, Msg). Additionally, “If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person?” (1 John 3:17, NLT). Who we are and how we live matters. It can change the world!

One of God’s foremost characteristics is compassion. As his image bearers, it must also be one of our core characteristics. Our ways of doing and our ways of being must reflect compassion. It is the best and perhaps the only way to bring God’s kingdom to earth to transform hurt lives now and forever.  As Jesus said in John 13:34-35 “A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.” The Bible is clear that compassion is a core attribute of the LORD God and his followers - you and me!

Reflect and act:

Look up the Bible verses Luke 6:35-36; 2 Corinthians 1:3-4; Colossians 3:12-13 and ponder on them.

• 1.      How are you as a follower of Jesus living selfless compassion?
• 2.      What is one specific way you can ‘clothe yourself with compassion’ today?
• 3.      What specific situation makes you experience splagchnizomai? What decisive compassionate action can you take this week to work toward remedying this suffering? 

• Dr Antonia van Loon RN, PHD
• Chairperson AFCNA 2024

Bible project 2020, Word Studies Compassion . https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/character-of-god-compassion/

We’re living in a post COVID-19 era, even though we still experience waves of COVID each year, the restrictive responses we had in 2020 are over. The legacy of COVID-19 has been that organisations are asking the question ‘How can we get back to normal?’ We hear it in churches, in charities, in not-for-profits, in the community… but is this the question we should be asking? Perhaps we should be asking ourselves , ‘How is God leading us into doing his work in a different way?’ The word and the movement God is highlighting to us at AFCNA is the call to facilitate ‘COMPASSION’!

 In late 2023 two AFCNA Board members went to separate events on developing ‘Compassionate Communities’ and a conference titled ‘Awakening compassion – Igniting the future of health care’. We have noted a revived interest in a global movement called the ‘Compassion Revolution’.  The Spiritual Care Association (SCA) which is the host organisation for the Westberg Institute for Faith Community Nursing has noted their common goal of “compassionate, whole-person care of body, mind, and spirit.”!

God is calling his people to reflect who he is to our hurting and troubled world! Our LORD is a compassionate God who embodies the essence of LOVE, and there is real supernatural power in his LOVE!  People throughout the world are yearning for compassion, respect, belonging, inner peace, hope, love… So what does this mean for us? God entrusted his followers to move forward his mission to make his kingdom of LOVE come to this EARTH for all to experience. He commands it in Matthew 22:37-40 (NCV) “³⁷ Jesus answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’^[a] 38 This is the first and most important command. ³⁹ And the second command is like the first: ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself.’^[b] 40 All the law and the writings of the prophets depend on these two commands.”

What do we mean by compassion? It may be understood as the provision of support, respect, loving care, empathy, sympathy, kindness, understanding, sharing, to build strength in one another as we journey through life’s valleys and the time of need and suffering that journey incurs. It is less about what we do, and more about how we do it! Compassion is lived out in who we are. It is a core characteristic of the true followers of Jesus, as Colossians 3:12 points out, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” The fact that we can ‘clothe ourselves’ implies that we can learn the art of compassion.

Mary Freer the CEO of Compassion Revolution https://compassionrevolution.care/ says “compassion is muscular” – that means it can be taught, experienced and memorised, so it becomes like ‘muscle memory’ that is inculcated as our default way of working and living.  It involves sensitivity to suffering in ourselves and/or in another person, which is accompanied by a commitment to alleviate, remove and/or prevent the suffering.  It involves putting our Christian faith into action, to express hope, demonstrate love, and deliver just and right outcomes for the suffering person/s.

Compassion has been demonstrated to reduce hospital stay, improve healing, increase client self-care and compliance with treatment. Clients who receive compassionate care give a better personal history which leads to increased accuracy in diagnosis and consequently better health outcomes. Providing compassionate care increases satisfaction with work roles which can reduce staff turnover. Stanford University School of Medicine have founded The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at https://ccare.stanford.edu/ where you can find many articles that demonstrate having attentive and compassionate health workers produces better health outcomes!

God created humans to give and receive love, and we are commanded to LOVE God, LOVE one another as we LOVE ourselves. God knows everyone needs it. So in 2024 AFCNA is seeking to increase personal compassion within individuals, and organisational compassion within faith communities. We want to raise up and equip more people who in turn can raise up others in their faith communities to facilitate compassionate faith communities.

Reflect and Action: Please take some time to listen to the popular song "You Raise Me Up" by Josh Groban [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEpeTyazaKI]

• 1.      The first time you listen to it stop and reflect on “YOU” as the person of Jesus who raising you up. What feeling does it engender within you?
• 2.      Listen a second time and consider yourself as the “YOU” raising up another person within your community.  
• 3.      This “raising up” is compassionate action. Who and how can you make this a reality this week for another person in your sphere of influence?

Sinclair S, Norris JM, McConnell SJ, Chochinov HM, Hack TF, Hagen NA, McClement S, Bouchal SR. Compassion: a scoping review of the healthcare literature. BMC Palliat Care. 2016 Jan 19;15:6. doi: 10.1186/s12904-016-0080-0. PMID: 26786417; PMCID: PMC4717626.

Trzeciak S, Mazzarelli,A 2019,  ‘Compassionomics – The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence That Caring Makes a Difference’, Studer group LLC, Florida USA

Josh Groban lyrics for "You Raise Me Up" available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEpeTyazaKI