Hearing bad news too often can have a hardening effect on the soul.

It's like working hands that form calluses.

We develop a tough outer skin when we're bombarded with tragedies, calamities, disasters, and other forms of adversity.

We may hear bad news and then go on with our day.

But that's easy to do when it's not happening to us personally.

Welcome to Keep the Heart podcast with Francie Taylor.

Francie is an author, teacher, and conference speaker known for sharing biblical insights that are practical

and inspiring. Now back to today's valuable study.

We will not all go through the same hardships in this life. We know that, but everyone does get a turn

in the rotation of painful situations. But there are also varying degrees of trouble,

and when we haven't been through the fire, we have a hard time understanding the painful

burns of extreme loss.

Situations that happen to people that are not happening to us make it really hard for us to relate. Sometimes even if we have gone through something similar but it was a long time

ago, the pain has softened so much that we become a little bit casual about someone else's fresh, raw pain.

Even if we go through the same trial, we may not sense the same level of discomfort that

another person experiences because we all respond differently.

When the trouble is not in your life, it takes intentional effort to have

compassion, empathy, and true concern. Let's consider three ways that God increases our compassion

for others with the goal of becoming better about caring, about others. First, God increases our compassion through sorrow. Did you know that some of the

happiest people have arrived at that spot by suffering? We mistakenly think that if life would just do what

we say and fit in nice, neat little calendar boxes, then we would be happy. But we would be like a tapestry that has only

one color of thread, flat and uninteresting. Listen to this poem, The Weaver, by Grant Colfax Tuller.

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