Isn’t it amazing that when trauma causes our world to stop, the earth continues to spin? When tragedy causes our time to pause, clocks are still ticking. The sun still rises and sets, people still make their mundane commutes to work and school, as if nothing has happened. I guess maybe if there is a big enough tragedy there will be posts on Facebook. But what is that really doing? Who does it help?
Yes, there is joy and life and goodness in the world still, but sometimes it feels non-existent. How do you tell a parent who just lost their child that life is still good? That the sky is still blue? How do you reconcile the disparity between the darkness of pain and the goodness of God? How do we show that God is love? How do we treat each other with that love? How do we care for each other when there is so much pain and anger and resentment? Especially when we use our fingers to point at each other, instead of connecting with each other.
Maybe the one who is wrong is not the others we point at, but the world we live in. You see, our world is fallen, our world is broken, and it is never going to be perfect. We don’t live in the Garden of Eden anymore. We feel pain and suffering and don’t know why. We don’t know how a good, caring God could let this happen. We don’t even comprehend the reality of our brokenness. We go through life as if we will never experience pain because we are “good” people. There are no good people, there are just people. So when we see suffering and tweet “#PrayingFor[insert location here]” are we actually praying? Are we lifting up these families, these people, these souls to the Lord? Are we thinking of someone outside of our own incredibly minute lives? Are we praying for the twisted, broken, darkened hearts of the people who cause such destruction?
Instead of saying that we are over-politicizing events, instead of saying that we are over-spiritualizing events, how about we do something? Our churches and our government need to take action. Our churches need to be praying for those in leadership of our country. Our churches need to be giving to those who are hurting. We do not need to have all of the answers. Our government needs to stop dividing between Left and Right and start uniting as humans.
