She used to be able to see them. That is what she misses.
When she was younger she would picture somebody. Not accurately, she had no way of being accurate, but vividly: a particular person in a particular room using the thing she was making, and it would change how she made it. She would think about their hands. She would think about what kind of morning they were having.
Now they are a number.
Not because she has become hard. She would push back on that firmly and she would be right. It is more that the number got large, and once a number gets past a certain size a person cannot hold faces in it, and the mind does what minds do, which is round it to a shape.
And the shape does not move her. You cannot love a shape.
She is awake at three because she cannot sleep and she has been sitting with the honest version of this, which is: I make things for people I have stopped being able to imagine, and something in me has gone quiet that used to be loud.
She has tried to fix it by thinking about the number differently. It does not work. Numbers do not become people by being considered harder.
You may know that table. Not compassion fatigue exactly. Something more like losing the picture, and no way to get it back by trying.
He put a face on it Himself
Here is a sentence where Jesus does the exact thing that has stopped being possible for you.
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.Matthew 25:40
One of the least of these.
Watch the arithmetic. He does not say inasmuch as ye have served the multitude. The whole passage is about enormous categories, the nations gathered, and at the decisive moment He shrinks it to one. One of them. A single person.
And then He does something more: He puts Himself into that one. Not near them, not concerned about them. In them. The scale problem is solved by a Person standing in the place of one.
You are able to hold one, and one is the number Scripture uses. Matthew 25:40 reduces a gathering of nations down to one of the least of these and puts Christ inside that one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a single imagined stranger real enough to care about at three in the morning.
Now let me say what I think has actually happened, because you were right that it is not hardness.
Your capacity for compassion has not shrunk. Your imagination has been overloaded, which is a different failure and a mechanical one. Human beings are built to love a face. Give a person a number and the machinery has nothing to grip, and what you experience as coldness is actually the sound of a mechanism running with nothing in it.
The fix is not to feel more about the number. It is to put one person back in.
You are made to hold one at a time, and the shrinking is God's own method rather than a failure of yours. The written word takes the nations and narrows them to one of the least of these, and the Holy Spirit is not asking you to feel something proportionate to a figure.
Here is the honest half. The one you picture will not be real. You are making them up, and you will never know if you got anything about them right, and I am not going to pretend that imagining a stranger is the same as knowing one.
But it is not a lie either. Somebody is out there. The number is made of them. Picking one and giving them a kitchen and a bad morning is not a fiction, it is a way of holding a truth your mind cannot hold in bulk.
There is a part only you can do. One person. Three details. Out loud. And then handed over.
The mechanism needs a face, and you are allowed to give it one.
You have been trying to feel something proportionate to a number, which nobody has ever managed, in any century, in any trade. The going quiet was not the death of your compassion. It was a machine with nothing to grip.
You are able to hold one person, and one is exactly what Scripture puts in front of you. Scripture narrows the nations to one of the least of these and puts Christ Himself inside that one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an imagined stranger sufficient to pray for.
So the number stays a number. And one of them gets a kitchen and a bad morning and a name you do not know.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud at the table, in the dark, with the glass of water where it is. The standing to speak them is yours in Christ, given rather than earned, which is why a woman who cannot picture anybody can speak with complete footing at three in the morning. Scripture is the ground under every line, the Holy Spirit makes it live, and who is actually out there is His to decide.
- Number I have stopped being able to picture, you are not what I was built to love. Scripture narrows the nations down to one of the least of these, so the quiet in me is a mind with nothing to hold rather than a heart that has gone cold.
- Sense that something in me has died, in the name of Jesus you are wrong about me. The written word puts Christ inside one single person, and the Holy Spirit is not asking me to feel something the size of a figure.
- Lord, be with this one tonight, the one I cannot see and have just given a kitchen and a bad morning. I thank You that Matthew 25:40 counts them one at a time and has You standing inside the one, and I am picturing a stranger now and handing them to You.
Matthew 25:40
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