Compassion in a Child

Come with me to a third grade classroom......There
is a nine-year-old kid sitting at his desk and
all of a sudden, there is a puddle between his
feet and the front of his pants are wet. He
thinks his heart is going to stop because he
cannot possibly imagine how this has
happened. It's never happened before, and
he knows that when the boys find out he will
never hear the end of it. When the girls find
out, they'll never speak to him again as long as
he lives...


The boy believes his heart is going to stop; he puts his
head down and prays this prayer, 'Dear God, this
is an emergency! I need help now! Five minutes
from now I'm dead meat.'


He looks up from his prayer and here comes the teacher
with a look in her eyes that says he has been
discovered.


As the teacher is walking toward him, a classmate named
Susie is carrying a goldfish bowl that is filled
with water. Susie trips in front of the teacher
and inexplicably dumps the bowl of water in the
boy's lap.



The boy pretends to be angry, but all the while is
saying to himself, 'Thank you, Lord! Thank you,
Lord!'





Now all of a sudden, instead of being the object of
ridicule, the boy is the object of sympathy. The
teacher rushes him downstairs and gives him gym shorts to put on while his pants dry out. All the other children are on their hands and knees
cleaning up around his desk. The sympathy is
wonderful. But as life would have it, the
ridicule that should have been his has been
transferred to someone else -

Susie.

She tries to help, but they tell her to get out.
You've done enough, you klutz!'


Finally, at the end of the day, as they are waiting for
the bus, the boy walks over to Susie and
whispers, 'You did that on purpose, didn't you?'
Susie whispers back, 'I wet my pants once
too..'






May God help us see the opportunities that are always
around us to do good...

Question for You: Do you have a story of compassion to share?