The Difference Between Moving and Being Moved

Mark 1:41
Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out His hand and touched him. “I am willing,” He told him. “Be made clean.” (HCSB)

It’s funny how convergent life seems at times. What appear on the surface to be random events – a conversation spoken here, a book read there, a song heard during a playlist on iTunes – often, upon deeper investigation, have similar themes and are more connected than we may have at first realized. The B99 and I are experiencing one of those moments right now, as the book she is reading and the book I am reading are eerily similar to one another, and even more striking, they both run parallel to the 30-day study I’m doing in Scripture. I’m not the most discerning guy, but it seems that God may be saying something, and that has prompted what you are now reading.

The titles of the books aren’t important (and they’ll each be written about later anyway as a part of my “Book a Week” challenge), but the statistics and stories contained in both have been more than compelling. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that the B99 and I have both been moved by what we’ve read, and I’m sure you would be, too. It’s not hard to be affected when you read things like 3 million women and 1 million children are trafficked sexually a year, or that the United States spends more money on beauty products than education. In light of the fact that half the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day, what does this statement do to you:

Every Sunday we gather in multimillion-dollar buildings with millions of dollars in vehicles parked outside. We leave worship to spend thousands of dollars on lunch before returning to hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of homes. (Radical, p. 115)

See? It isn’t hard to be moved. You don’t really even have to do anything. Sometimes you can be moved simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as anyone who has been in an accident can tell you. If I walk clumsily toward you and bump you, you’ve been moved even if you didn’t want to be. It requires absolutely no desire to be moved. Being moved happens to you, and is often just about a change in position. Moving, on the other hand, is about a change in priorities.

Being moved by compassion makes us people of emotion. Moving with compassion makes us people of action. A lot of us are moved by a lot of things: a sad movie, a picture of a starving boy with a swollen belly, a passionate sermon by a charismatic preacher. The question is, are we moving as the result of any of it? Moving requires effort, thought, passion, purpose. It is what we do as a result of what has been done. Jesus was moved with compassion, and as a result He reached out His hand. Most of us, when we’re moved with compassion, sit in the dimply lit sanctuary and wring our hands.

The B99 and I are growing increasingly aware of our propensity to be moved without ever really moving, and while it’s good to be moved instead of sitting cold-heartedly in a world of pain, at the end of the day it feels hollow if we haven’t followed it up with moving, with reaching, and with touching those in need.

Admittedly, I don’t know what it all looks like in the end, but I know that I am ready to do what I can, where I can, for whom I can. I am ready to move.

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