@FirstChurchofJerusalem
Today's Early Church Wisdom
“I shall not hesitate also to put into ordered form for you, along with the interpretations, everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down carefully, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people, I took no pleasure in those who told many different stories, but only in those who taught the truth. Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments, but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders arrived, I made enquiries about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.
~ Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD) From the Preface to his lost ‘Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord’
This week's Psalm is Psalm 31 'My Rock, My Shield, My Song'

Learning to Empathise

We have seen that empathy is a great key to effective witness for Christ, but why is it so hard to express? The answer lies in our conditioning. We are all trained from birth to use words as a medium of communication, so we become fluent in the use of communication by language, but we are not trained in the development of emotional communication skills. In fact, in some family sub-cultures, we may even be actively discouraged from expressing ourselves in this way! Let me explain further. Whilst it is possible to communicate empathy using words, these are not the main channel of emotional communication. Empathy is best communicated by sighs, hmmms, aaaaahs, groans, gasps, sympathetic facial expressions, tears, open body language, nods of concern, caring silences and sympathetic smiles, etc. If you still think this is easy, try it on someone. Maybe warn them in advance of what you are doing, or they may be a little nonplussed. There’s not a great deal of active empathic communication in our culture.