Humanity

This morning I've been pondering humanity and have seen the faces of suffering around me. First my mother-in-law called to say my father-in-law, who has had fever nearly a week now, fainted while sitting at his desk and banged himself up pretty good. He woke up an hour later, completely under the desk, with a deep gash on his forehead and a lot of bruises. Austin has spent the morning at the doctor's office with him and they are getting all kinds of tests done. After the boys left for school, I headed to the grocery store. I noticed a woman sitting on the sidewalk as I rode past. Her hair was chopped off and she had a vacant look in her eyes as she talked to herself. On my way home I noticed that she had laid down on the sidewalk, wrapped only in her sari, and fallen asleep as hundreds of people passed by. A young man was sleeping with his head on his knees, propped up against a wall. Sad faces. Pleading faces. Busy faces. Curious faces. Happy faces. Blank faces. Humanity surrounding me. A woman came to my door, wanting a job. She worked for foreigners in the past but had to stop to take care of her small child and now needs to work again. A friend was bawled out by her mother and went to work in tears. My little boy came home from school and was a sad as he told me about getting left behind when the rest of his class went to the library and he didn't know where they were. I held him close for a while and then he bounced up and wanted to eat something. Would that all the world could be healed with a hug. I am reminded of a quote by Susan Classen who worked for MCC in Nicaragua -

"God's love flows through us into the world and we carry the pain of the world back to God. Our hearts don't have the capacity to hold the pain. God asks us only to feel it and let it go as we carry it to God's heart."

We are faced with so much poverty and suffering. I have found that I can either harden my heart and refuse to deal with the reality around me or I can burn out trying to help everyone. Somewhere in between those two options there is another, that of feeling the pain and then letting it go. I often struggle with feeling like it is not enough. I want to do more to ease the ache of humanity.

I was recently touched by the book The Shack by Phillip Young. It is the story of a father who is overcome with grief after his young daughter is abducted. One day he gets a note from God, inviting him to the shack where the last clues of his daughter's life had been found. He goes and meets God there and his life is changed forever. It touched something deep in my heart as I laughed and cried my way through the pages of the book and the losses of my own life. It did so much for my soul, a brush with the Divine that goes deeper than words. I highly recommend reading it.

Well, my dear little boy has been waiting for his turn to be on the computer, so I need to go...