As lover, God is compassionate. This is God’s character. Compassion, as many of you know, is an unusually rich metaphor in the Bible. It’s related to the word for “womb.” To say that God is compassionate is to say that God is like a womb or “womblike,” life-giving, nourishing. Compassion in the Bible also has resonances associated with the feelings that a mother has for the children of her womb.
