Sometimes I feel floored by the amount of suffering around me. It's like walking through a meteor shower watching people all around me getting hit, wondering when my turn will come. Families falling apart, parents becoming disabled, babies with incurable terminal illnesses, untimely, tragic death. And these are just my personal acquaintances.
To see the scope of human suffering that walks through the door at work is enough to give anyone a case of mild anxiety. A diving accident that robs a young man of any movement, the drowning accident that takes a family's young child, the driving accident that takes a brother, the incurable, degenerative illness that ensures a young woman a future of doctor's appointments, hospitalizations, and pain. The woman who "fell down the stairs" but you're 99% sure her husband hit her. The woman who wakes up on a cold porch after being date raped. I've seen so many suicide attempts I've lost count.
I look around sometimes and think, what a sad, broken world.
And I wonder... what do people do without hope? If your best consolation is the journey into oblivion offered by death - how do you possibly cope? If people really grasped that, I'd think many more would be understandably crippled by panic attacks.
I have hope that God will set everything right. That all the pain and sorrow of this present world will be only a speck in the grand scheme of God's eternal plan. I know many people think that is naive and fantastical. I disagree. And I wonder how they get out of bed in the morning without hope.
I wonder that too.
ReplyDeleteSome ramblings to add to your own. :) Thank you for sharing your heart. I have been thinking a lot on this same issue lately.
ReplyDeleteWhen confronted with incredible suffering by those around us (loved ones and patients alike), it can also be easy to question God--His goodness and faithfulness. However, I have to trust that God, in His great love for us set the world in motion with a thing called human choice. Without this maybe it could be a perfect world, but with it we have the entire history of the human race setting us up for sickness and disease playing a natural part of life. So, believer and non-believer alike will face similar ailments. What I have noted is that those who believe in God and His faithfulness, regardless of the situation, tend to have more joy and peace throughout it all...more hope. I do believe that God did not want this for us as a race, and it breaks His heart to see us suffer. Think of Jesus who wept over Lazarus. Think of Jesus who was moved with compassion over Jerusalem where the people were lost like sheep without a shepherd. In the end He will set all things right as you put it.