Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Near sighted

Since High School, I have had to rely on corrective lenses to see anything at a distance. These days I prefer to wear contacts and only switch to my glasses for morning and evening use. I was staring at my coke bottle lenses last night. If someone picked them up, they would know one thing for sure: someone really needs these.

What would not be so evident about my glasses, is how much they help me...how many books they've helped me to read, roads they've helped me to travel on, hazards they've helped me to avoid while walking around late at night in my house. My glasses are a useful tool to me--they have and continue to help me see the world more clearly.

I wish I had such an instrument for understanding the happenings of the world outside my comfortable home. I wish I could process the hurts and sufferings of those in my community and those in places far from my home with some clarity about why...some clear vision about when such suffering and pain will end...some greater understanding about where God is in the midst of all of it.

But I don't have something as handy as my glasses that will instantly bring such things into focus. So I pray...I pray those people and places in the world that are in pain. I pray for relief and comfort...for help...and for a shared understanding that when one of us suffers (however far away and distant that one is), we all suffer.

I invite you to be at prayer for those you know...for those we read and hear about on the news...for the many nameless and faceless people whose stories we'll never read about or hear about.

Journey On...

1 comment:

Terri said...

Hey Rochelle, nice to have you back! Love this reflection on "seeing" or not....I wonder too where God is and then just have to trust that into the chaos God still comes and works in and through humans to bring forth some kind of order and wholeness...which does not eliminate the suffering and grief but hopefully redeems it into some kind new creation and good...that's what I hope.