“We all live in a harsh
world, but at least I know I do.” Tom
Branson
About a month ago I got
into Downton Abby. Friends had been
encouraging me for almost a year to watch the show and when I finally gave in I
was hooked. The dialogue above struck me
immediately but as I had a few other blog posts lined up I delayed in writing
about them. I planned to write about the
state of American culture, specifically in suburbia. I’d planned to write on our talent at
escapism, our self-medication, our worship of comfort and subsequent flight
from pain. I’d planned to talk about how
easy it is for us in the U.S. to ignore, escape, numb ourselves against the
difficulties of life by means of entertainment, drugs, and activity. I wanted to encourage myself and others to
face hardships with open eyes and flee from slipping into comfortable oblivion
in which we avoid conflict and stop our ears to the cries of our own souls and
those of others.
Then came Monday. Stories of the explosions in Boston, images
of bloodied runners and paramedics, the realization that someone I knew was in
that race… Pain became difficult to ignore as the media flooded with
information, heartache, horror. I cried
reading the story of the eight year old boy killed at the finish line, of the
war veteran who assisted with the injured, remembering like echoes Sandy Hook,
Virginia Tech, the day the planes
crashed into those buildings my sophomore year of high school…
***
“What’s going on in the
world?”
“Things are getting
worse and worse.”
“This makes me sick.”
We do hide ourselves so
well from pain, but moments like this remind us that we can’t forever run from
it, remind us of the harsh world we live in, of the universal effect of sin. My heart breaks for Boston right now, but
even in my horror I don’t think I feel the pain like I should. The pain is over there, far away. It’s their harsh world beyond the computer
screen, past the radio waves, in Boston and this breaks my heart further
still. It’s easy for me to forget the
harsh world in which I live, all too easy to stick my head in the sand and
click to the next episode of a TV show on Netflix. So I am praying for my numbed heart, for a
greater compassion for that which feels far away, for a greater compassion for
the groaning around me, and most of all for those right now in the midst of a
horror I can’t imagine.
Romans 8:26-27
26 In the same way the
Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should,
but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; 27
and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He
intercedes for the [a]saints according to the will of God.
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