Last night a number of people gathered for our monthly prayer time on Darfur at my house and I thought I would share some of what was discussed from an article written by Bryant Myers in the Brandywine Review of Faith And International Affairs called "Compassion with an Attitude: a Humanitarian's View of Human Suffering."
Compassion with an Attitude Defined... 
He defines compassion on three levels:
1. "Compassion begins with seeing the suffering of others and being willing to listen to its call. If we are willing to see and to hear, we must next be willing to feel. The first part of being truly and incarnationally compassionate is to be moved to the core of our being with pity and outrage when in the presence of human suffering."
2. "To hear, see, and feel is the foundation of compassion. Yet it is not compassion itself. In its fullest sense, compassion is an action word. Driven by conviction and mercy, we must act..."
3. "Compassion actions that Jesus took were not just ameliorative. Compassion is more than mercy and more than simple response. Biblical compassion has a bias in favor of social restoration.." (ie. showing compassion to refugees but also unmasking the human greed and hunger for power that created the conflict from which refugees flee)
He goes on to describe three marks of a church that has embraced "incarnational empathy". 1) Sacrificial giving, 2) Social Restorative Actions - making noise in polite and powerful places or tacking the injustices that cause suffering, and 3) Prayer.
What does this have to do with Darfur? I am still learning the what and how but I do know that we can prayer for God and His Glory to be revealed even in the midst of the mess of Sudan and that Jesus' model of compassion is a challenge for us to see, feel, respond, and speak out.
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