One news report has 39 dead in a shipping container. Another, a little girl found in a dumpster. Thoughts spring to unfathomable pastures of grief for the loved ones affected. And there we are, the sensitive ones who bear witness to the evils in this world.
The truth is none of us are unaffected by these evils. They permeate our lives from half a world away, and so they should. We should forever grieve the capacity of humanity to make pain and to take life.
But in being affected, many of us are left with no way to process this vicarious grief. The more sensitive among us will struggle to contend with the inner anguish these events evoke. And some, perhaps very unknowingly, will be so affected by the violence that they too will be violent, and maybe not even with other people.
We may look at our loved ones and somehow see them impacted in some future crime done against them, shudder the thought. We cannot imagine that thought, or even the possibility of such evil.
We all carry around a constant background level of worldly grief for the death and mayhem amid global issues that continues to bombard our outer and inner worlds.
If we have been impacted by some hellish incursion of darkness, a veritable blight against our senses of rationality and reason, our gentle spirits need space to grieve.
If we have been assaulted again by atrocities that are too much for loving hearts to bear, we must then be honest with ourselves; we will need time to ponder and to placate our troubled souls.
If we cannot comprehend when a child or vulnerable people are vanquished, if it’s all too much, then we ought to find the distraction we need in order to be reconnected to the ideals of ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’
Respect for sorrow calls for time to be still, as hearts contemplate that God is bigger.
We patiently bear what would crush the gentle soul. We learn that this world’s cares cause us to cast our hearts toward the one who cares from the world of heaven.
From there we’re satisfied that all will be well and justice, for these cases, will be swift and unstinting.
Photo by Nishta Sharma on Unsplash
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