Lately the world cannot seem to get a chance to properly
grieve over tragedy before terror sinks its teeth into our hearts again and
rips open precious humanity. Maintaining a global awareness as of late almost
requires us compartmentalize, to develop blinders, as it were, to distance ourselves
from the onslaught of pain and pure evil that operates seemingly on a 24-hour
clock. We only have so many tears to shed, so many hours to pray in a day, so
many ways to put words in an order that accurately describe our ache… don’t we?
Scrolling through my news feed, I am emotionally exhausted, enraged even, to
see yet another “Pray for _____” hashtag trending on Twitter. Trying to weed through
distressing pictures, hateful rhetoric, and oversimplified statements that instigate
more condemnation against the innocent than they do against the perpetrators
just to find a journalist that can give me a dignified, respectful report.
Honestly, I think we are really missing the point. Even
before the body counts have been totaled, before fathers have had a chance to
weep and before friends have found a solitary place to mourn-- in the critical
moments that follow an international tragedy—we still find a way to make it all
about us. We point fingers instead of holding out hands; we grapple violently
to find answers, stumbling, like poor men that voraciously dig for rumored
treasure that we wish we didn’t have to find. The “why” is always out of reach,
no matter how hard we cast our shovels into the ground.
The tragedy is made cheap. It becomes scrambled in a cloud
of battling narratives and clever axioms that aggrandize the speaker, deviously
using the vulnerability of the tragedy to heighten his emotional appeal and
push his political agenda forward but rarely to simply commemorate and lament the
unseen victims. We’ll forget about the blood and dismembered body parts strewn
across the airport after we get 100 shares and ten retweets on our clever
social media post/political speech.
And really, I am talking to myself. A false sense of accomplishment
is trying to steal a tangible call to action. I know there are psychological
and sociological phenomena that reveal this part of our nature. And I hate it.
Inundated by statistics, pixilated faces, far away places, swallowed up in an
unfortunate sea of their numbers... How can I make this more “real”?
And yet still on days like today, I am unable to numb the
sting of my empathy that makes me so human, that makes me hurt so deeply for my
world, unable to sever the ties that connect me to mothers who mourn for lost
jihadi sons, for young men that are desperate to cash out on bankrupt
ideologies that promise to quench their thirst for identity, acceptance, power
and hope. But no amount of blood can ever satisfy a thirst for evil.
And they did thirst for something else. I mourn for what
they never seemed to find. Second chances. Redemption. Hope. Jesus Christ.
I mourn for families who have had their worlds obliterated by
bombs in Syria and I mourn for those families who crumble quietly in America by
divorce, drug abuse and poverty.
I skimmed through the news in Pakistan today, wincing at
every picture. I asked God, “Why?’ And to be honest I think that’s ok to do, as
long as we are okay with not getting an immediate response sometimes. I do
believe the answer exists, if we can wait any amount of time for it, into
eternity. But then, in that moment, I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to know why
He would let dozens of women and precious children be so brutally snuffed out,
why innocence was trampled upon and why men became monsters. The hearts of men
are deep wells.
And for a brief second, I felt defeated. I felt powerless,
overcome by an impenetrable darkness that threatens to shroud our world in confusion,
fear and division. I know this isn’t all about me, but I think it can start
with me. I think it can start with anybody.
A prayer broke across my lips in an honest and broken
whisper, like a tiny ship sent forth to span miles of rocky waves until it
finds its destined harbor. Hope was released. Somebody will find my prayer. I
know they will. Because prayers don’t come back until they find the person they
were meant for. Prayers never die. They
clothe strangers with comfort; they build a wall of resistant love around our
homes, our communities. Standing in the rubble again, sifting through tragedy
we stay our knees, refusing to submit to fear. These seeds are carried by the
winds of prayer. And they travel far.
You and I may never have any direct impact upon
international and domestic policy that roots out racism, hatred and
parochialism and at the end of the day, manmade policies only get us so far
before the rest of the journey is a personal commitment to forgiveness, mercy
and grace.
Fellow human, fellow believer, fellow Christ-follower: the biggest
lies we face aren’t perverted radicalism and seductive extremist ideologies. It’s
that you’re light, your face is insignificant.
Call me old fashion, but if it’s one thing I know from the
Good Book, it’s that darkness will never win. We do.
