what's going on?!

Have you ever stopped during the day, looked around you and wondered what on earth is going on? Have you watched the news and had your heart broken by a story? One that has haunted you for days? Have you wondered what it's all for? Have you cried over a situation that you have heard about? Have you looked on with disgust at something going on right in your own backyard?

At times I sit back and hope that it all ends soon, surely the world can't continue breaking hearts the way it does and not have an end in sight? Children being killed by parents, or traded into slavery for a loan, children suffering untold physical, emotional, sexual abuses by those they trust. Kids being stolen from the homes they know and love and either held captive for the sick pleasure of their perverted captor or to end up the victim of their violent hands. Women, killed in their own homes by men who claim to love them, or raped in the street by a stranger bent on proving he's powerful. Men, bullied and beaten by Fathers who don't understand them, forced to commit violence by 'friends' in a search for belonging...

oh how this world breaks my heart.

So many people are suffering untold pain, hidden struggles, secrets and hurts. So many people soldier on through life, putting on armor meant to protect but all it does is restrict their movement. This world hurts, it aches and bleeds and we watch with distance, we hurt and feel but we remain apart. Afraid to feel too deeply, afraid to care because by caring we must take action.

I can't tell you how many times I have had to turn off the news because some story is just too painful for me to hear, too close to home for me to allow myself to relate. Yet, how can change be made if we remain blind? I am sad today by the things I am hearing, from friends and strangers, who are suffering loss, illness, hurts, anger, and violence. I am sad for the brokenness I see all around me and I feel helpless as to what to do about it. I have no words for the hurting people in my own life, nor for those strangers who have written their desperate cries for prayers, I am simply at a loss for words.

Just yesterday I had an email and the writer said 'I am at a loss for words, I am undone' and then she told her story of pain and suffering and her hope in the midst of it that God would work everything to His glory.

How grateful I am for hope, how grateful I am for a God who is so close at hand that the moment I need him I need only call out his name, how grateful I am for belief that this world and all her brokenness will be overcome and made whole again and how grateful I am that I can wait in a state of prayer and thanksgiving and hope.