Shared grief

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted ~ Matthew 5:4

My thoughts are scattered and piecemeal; in attempting to write from the heart I'm finding my heart still broken on the floor.  I'm trying to make sense of something senseless, and find that I just need to cling to my rock and trust.  It's not the trust of not knowing, of a safe and sheltered life...this is the trust in the middle of the storm.  God is my shelter when there is no other shelter left, he is my strength when I am weak and broken.

We're still a community in mourning, and in it's own odd way I find that mourning is a comfort.  Because how can you mourn for something you never had and never lost?  How can you mourn unless you first have loved?  And how can we love a people we have never known, except by the grace of God?  We witnessed a tragedy of desperation - something so incomprehensible from the Western medical mind.  So many of us feel a sense of entitlement to things: to good, safe and speedy medical care, clean water, sufficient food, pursuit of happiness however we see fit.  

And yet the reality is that there are people fighting just to survive.  So desperate for even basic medical care that they could run unseeing over another person, many of them having spent days or weeks walking, or using up all of their savings just to have a chance at hope.  They are the ones so often unseen, unremembered, left behind.

I can't play ostrich and bury my head in the sand when there is no sand left.  In watching, in remembering, in mourning I find a clarity of purpose, a meaning for hope.  In a world of chaos I have found one thing that stands firm, and that is Jesus and His love - for me and for humanity.  And on that rock I can stand.

Promises shattered
Answers don't come
Friends say goodbye
Plans come undone
Dreams get crushed
Lies get told
Words can turn cruel
Hearts can grow cold

You make sense of the madness
And make darkness flee
You bring such a calm
To the chaos in me
Show me life
Tell me truth
Day after day I keep running to You

In a broken world where we cry to feel
Some hope that helps these hearts to heal
You're my strength, You're my refuge

In a broken world, Jesus I'm holding to You         ~ Across the Sky