);
American poet Walt Whitman puts it well: “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels; I myself become the wounded person.”
Compassion is empathy in action. Sympathy is merely a feeling.
The definition of empathy according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is the
feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions.
It’s hard to put yourself in someone else’s place when you have no point of reference. But as God allows certain experiences in our lives, we don’t have to imagine empathy because we feel it automatically; it is a gift we can give a hurting person.