Compassion: Okujjanjaba

I can't find a word

in lu

ga

nda (a language spoken by most Ugandans, along with Swahili and English) for "compassion". "Okujjanjaba" meaning "to care for another" is the closest synonym I could think of. This

quote was read to me today by one of my professors at Birmingham-Southern. It REALLY hit home, especially the last paragraph. Please pray that during this journey, we will truly embrace the principle of compassion and extend it to those we encounter both at home and those that we are

striving to serve in Uganda.

Thank you!

The Wilbanks Fam

It has been said, “He who lives for himself alone lives for the meanest moral known.” Compassion extends us. It extends our scope of positive influences beyond our immediate situation. Any success is hollow without it.

The literal definition of compassion is “to feel with.” It means living with the knowledge that your life is as important as mine, your dreams as valid, your children as precious, your pain as real. Compassion gives us a more valid view of the world by taking us out of its center. Every person you see has stories, and every person you see has a few that would break your heart. We deserve each other’s respect simply because we’ve survived all we have and kept going anyway.

Compassion fuels kindness, gentleness, and patience. It helps you realize that everybody else is doing the best they can, just as you are. That makes it easier to give other imperfect people the benefit of the doubt. Compassion is also an invaluable aid in accepting others as they are and allowing them to be different from us.

Follow your compassion where it takes you, even though some people are bound to disapprove. Perhaps your cause isn’t theirs, or the suffering that pierces your soul doesn’t seem real to them, or they’re simply so involved with their own concerns that little else matters.
Save some compassion for them, too.

~Victoria Moran