Empathy is what makes us human. Empathy is the ability to share in another person’s emotions—from within the other person. When you feel empathy, you feel suffering from within another person’s heart. When empathy is felt, there is no distinction between you and the other; it is oneness with the other.

Our brokenness is the entrance point into feeling from within another person’s being. And, this same brokenness, creates a crack for God to go through our empathy so that He can weep from within the other. It is through authentic human empathy that God chooses to touch us. Human empathy is God’s vessel of healing.

When you sense empathy, you sense God moving through you and into another person. When you feel empathy, you feel oneness with God, your neighbor, and yourself. Our brokenness unites this world, with the next.

The broken have special power—because only in their brokenness does the heart of God reach into this broken world.

If we give empathy, we give the empathy of God.

**Based on my book: Opening Happiness