Pierced

"But he was pierced for our transgressions." (Isaiah 53:5)

To be pierced is to let someone's pain get through your defenses, to be genuinely affected by their suffering instead of observing it from a safe distance with your arms folded. And being pierced is a choice. You can stand in a hospital room with the wall up. Ministers learn to do it early, and so do nurses, and teachers, and anyone who would otherwise be destroyed by the sheer volume of it. You can be present and untouched, say the right words with a clipboard in your hands, and drive home whole.

There are reasons we do it, and they are not all cowardly; a person who has been badly hurt is not a coward for flinching. But hear the hard thing plainly. You cannot love a person you have not let in. There is no version of compassion where you stay sealed. The word itself, in Latin, means to suffer with. Not to suffer near. Not to suffer about. With.

Which means that every time you actually love someone, you are handing them a knife and showing them where you are soft. That is not a reason to stop. It is the cost of the only kind of love that is real. Christ was pierced, and he was pierced on purpose, and it was through the opening that our healing came. So stop asking how to love without exposure. Ask instead whether you are willing to be pierced, because sealed is just another word for alone.