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Q. How did you turn out to be such a bleeding heart? Didn't you come from a business family?

A. My parents can share some of the blame. At strategic points in my youth, their actions demonstrated that compassion for single parents, latchkey kids, refugees and the unemployed was fundamental to Christian faith.

My dad's example: We'd just acquired a new 1957 Chrysler, blaze yellow with fins that didn't quit. A lot of my adolescent identity was wrapped up in this macho hunk of metal.

Thus I was livid when a grubby-faced kid bashed his bicycle into the side of it, putting a long deep gouge into that gorgeous yellow finish. I expected Dad to be as outraged as I was.

Dad certainly wasn't pleased. But the kid was from the tenements, a few streets over. "No," Dad said, his flush of anger giving way to self-control, "we won't pursue it." The message was clear: we don't squeeze the poor, even when it's our legal "right."

My mom's example: A single woman in our church had the ill fortune to bear a child out of wedlock. But she and her new baby kept coming back to services. People in the grip of scandal were expected to disappear.

My mother's standards in these matters are as high as anyone's. But here was a woman who needed support amid her public shame, and my mother went out of her way to provide it. In the foyer after church, she'd hover attentively over the child, as only my mother can. Many others, meanwhile, kept their distance.

I got the message.

Wally Kroeker edits The Marketplace magazine from Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Adapted from: God's Week Has 7 Days (Herald Press, 1998)

For your convenience, God's Week Has 7 Days is available in the ChristianityToday.com bookstore.

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Prayer for the Week

Father, help me to reflect Your deep compassion to the needy people I encounter.

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