traffic and coffee

Just about every morning, I check msn.com for the latest celebrity gossip. Yesterday, however, I was greeted with news and pictures of horror and grief. I prayed at my desk for Londoners and their friends and family. To step into the day, expecting it to be like every other day - filled with traffic and work and people and coffee – only to be jolted by the kind of violence and tragedy that somehow manages to be both conceivable and inconceivable at the same time... I feel, in some small measure, genuine sorrow for those who suffer, and anger toward whoever is responsible.

Then I recalled a video clip from church a couple of weeks ago. Some 1,500 people die from AIDS every day in Africa, not to mention those who perish from hunger and curable diseases. My mind is troubled by this information, but my heart is unable to translate the statistics. I can’t relate. I don’t have any frame of reference to help me imagine what it would look like to have those numbers be a part of my daily reality.

Somehow, the situation in Africa feels less tragic because it’s so… mundane. People there meet hunger (or disease or death) every day – that’s their traffic and coffee. Nothing out of the ordinary, right?

How do I mourn with those who mourn, and weep with those who weep, when I just don’t understand their experience? Or do I try to empathize with God – how He must grieve to see His loved ones suffer and die, how He must rage at those whose neglect perpetuates that suffering? What of my own culpability?