Browsing Tag

Empathy

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Mama’s K.I.S.S. #86: Secret Sisters/Brothers with the Elderly

Posted on April 17, 2026

As you know, if you’ve been reading, for quite some time, I’ve occasionally been running little installments called “Mama’s K.I.S.S.” I know that lots of readers could give many more and far more creative ideas than I can offer, but these installments are just a few tried and true and mostly old-fashioned ideas for putting service hearts in our kids.  This is number 86 of a list of one hundred ways we train our kids to serve. K.I.S.S. is an acronym for “Kids In Service Suggestions”.

This one’s great to do anytime of year, but summertime is prime when the kids are out of school.

Pass out a questionnaire to your elderly members. Ask them about their favorites: home items, snacks, scents, office supplies, shopping venues, colors and hobbies Make sure you ask about birthday and anniversary dates.

Then distribute the completed questionnaires to your young people. (Teens love to do this!) Young people need structure, so assign specifically here. Make sure the young partner is anonymously remembering his/her older “partner” with a card or small gift at least every two weeks. You will need to take five minutes of class time or family Bible time each week to be sure this is getting done. (It’s somewhat easier if you are doing this with your own children, of course, but the “peripheral” kids in the youth group may be the most blessed in the gifting.) Our kids live in a world of largely irresponsible youth, so you will need to help and bolster, at least at first. Sometimes each child will need to take more than one adult. Sometimes each adult will have multiple young people who are “gifting” them. Surpluses on both sides are fine; even great. This is one secret gifting program, though, that is not reciprocal. Those who receive the little gifts are exclusively the elderly.

At the end of the gifting period–perhaps after about three months, plan a meal for the kids to reveal their identities to the elderly partners. This time the gift will be signed and opened in front of the young gift-giver. This day is the most fun of all. There’s lots of encouragement to go around on both sides and, just like that, the congregation becomes less age-segregated and closer.

I’m saying today….do this one! Empathy for the age-related challenges that elderly people face is largely missing in the teens of our world.  Christianity calls our teens to be holy/set apart in the way they view elderly people, particularly their brothers and sisters in Christ.

You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord (Lev.19:32).

Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5)

 

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Sister to Sister: How about a Little Empathy?

Posted on January 4, 2017

When I hang a new calendar, looking over the spent and tattered one I’m putting in that file cabinet…the cabinet that now has a stack of gridded sheets that represent the business, the slammed schedules, the birthday parties, the travel. as well as the mundane housecleaning, cabin cleaning, and mending days of the past year, I always try and think about the big picture. Every little square in that twelve page card stock and pocketed book that I’m filing away was a day of movement. Every square was movement toward heaven or away from it. We live sadness and hope. We live purpose and appointments. We live fun and fervor. But we never live static. Each turn of the page is a progression toward eternity. What makes each square so precious is that one square will be the last one. 

…Which makes me think about empathy. With the passage of time in each of our lives, our experiences multiply. I mean, I used to have no clue about grandparenthood. (Who are all these crazies who are obsessing over a dimple or the color of a baby’s hair?) Now I know. I fully empathize because my realm of experience grew. That happened on one of the squares in 2014. I used to come up short in the empathy department for those who were caring for elderly parents. Not any more. That happened slowly on lots of squares in the past ten or so calendar records. Experiences have simply broadened my scope of empathy. It was never that I didn’t have sympathy for those in the sandwich generation. But empathy is a whole different thing. Empathy is what make you give grace and truly feel WITH another who is experiencing something you’ve known firsthand. Remember, empathy is what makes our Lord the GREAT high priest that He is. We do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Rather, we have one who has been tried in every point, just like we are tried, yet He did it without sin (Heb. 4:15). Empathy qualifies him to be my mediator and I am so thankful for His divine empathy. 

On that page, let me list a few scenarios of which I will not be critical this year. Experiences produce empathy. Empathy produces grace. So here:

  1. I will not criticize young mothers who are struggling in worship services to make toddlers behave. 
  2. I will not criticize young families who are occasionally late for Bible class.
  3. I will not criticize young moms who show up for Bible class on Wednesday night in jeans and a milk-stained t-shirt. 
  4. I will not criticize older people whose eyes occasionally close and whose head sometimes inadvertently bows during the sermon on Sunday.
  5. I will not criticize bragging grandmothers.
  6. I will not criticize grandmothers who buy too many baby clothes.
  7. I will not criticize the careful choices made by children about the care of aged parents.
  8. I will not criticize the families of faithful elders and preachers about matters of judgment.
  9. I will not criticize people who occasionally cry in public–people who others may classify as “emotional basket cases.”
  10. I will not criticize the eating and exercise habits of busy people.
  11. I will not criticize those who do not take every call at the moment it comes.
  12. I will not criticize busy people who lose keys, phones, glasses and other essentials frequently and who sometimes forget appointments.

There’s a little list of a few of the many decisions that experience has helped me make. Experience is my friend. Gray strands are my teachers. I know that our realms of empathy are not all the same. But the world might be a gentler place if we allowed the scenarios  and circumstances we’ve faced to teach us grace. Notice that I did not say “indifference to sin.” We have to care deeply about what grieves God. But empathy makes us also care deeply about the “infirmities” of His people. Experience makes us keenly aware that we might not know details that are crucial in decisions being made by others. Empathy makes us better people.