Recently my part-time job has been all about creating PowerPoints. As I search for images to spark emotion, capture attention, and speak louder then words or text, I come across random pictures. For example, a search for trauma brings up blood and gore, first responders, cartoon sketches, popular T.V. shows, and images of people mourning. A search for disasters can bring up wrestlers, tornados, or even horses - really random. As certain images I searched through sparked emotion in me, I wanted a platform to journal about them, ask deep questions and contemplate beauty, life, people, etc... and thus another reason to start blogging :) The following picture is one that fits the description. Stop and think about this image. Look at the lines, the shadows, the artistic capture of a moment in time. What does it make you feel?
As I think about our world, so numb, so hard hearted to the things we see in the media, the T.V. shows that we watch, the news we hear: Death, sex, communication, relationships, heroism all are dictated to us, desensitizing us to the realities of real suffering. This image for me calls to my heart the suffering our world is facing even today with news in Somalia, riots in London, or the Norway massacre to name a few. We take in so much suffering that we hear in the news, that our response becomes "thats so sad," and then turn and continue on with our day. When will the suffering stop? What can we do? When will people realize the suffering that we inflict on each other (pain, systemic racial inequalities, financial injustice)? I just finished reading a book set in WorldWar II, and was reminded of the atrocities that happened with the Holocaust. And this is why the picture above stood out to me: Was she a young Jewish girl that just lost her mother? What image did she see that caused the pain her eyes? In a world of terror, her beauty and plight were captured for a moment. Hopelessness surrounds me, surrounds us in this fallen world. For me my only hope for relieved suffering is that we hope in something greater, something not on this side of heaven. Romans 12:12 "Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer." Lord Jesus help me to be sensitive to the suffering around me, to seek justice and goodness, to trust in you and your plan when I do not understand.
