I don’t know where to start or what to say about all the pain that is swirling.
I have only seen children who sleep as refugees and the pain in Paris on the thin screen of my television. And although I have held the hand of a girl who smiled big on a pile of rocks in Haiti and have seen all kinds of loss and grief in my life, I have no measuring stick for the terrorist attacks and refugees and politics that are swirling.
I can’t understand it all and I won’t pretend that I do. I can’t know the wandering and the not-knowing, the death right there splattered red. The only thing I knew to do with all my feelings was to write to Jesus:
Dear Jesus,
Jesus there are some things that just downright don’t make sense. If I’m honest, I have to fight back anger and deep sadness some days. What I have seen up close and scrolling across the screens from oceans away makes me scared and doubtful. And as if I don’t have a voice. But you didn’t create me with a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, and love.” (2Tim 1:7) And so if I am going to speak, let it be to you first. . .
(my letter is over at Outside the City Gate today) I’d love to pray together over there…
