How can it be so peaceful here, full of people whose love for each other fills in the cracks and makes up for our messy, human faults when just next door, a war full of lies and schemes and hatred fills the stubborn silence until it screams just under the surface?
This was a glorious, uneventful day.
Sometimes all days like this make me think of is the evil in the world; how incredibly blind people can be to their own stupidity, how sickeningly corrupt individuals can become, how insanely close-minded people can be to any ideas other than their very own.
But then too those glorious, uneventful days just remind me that there IS still good in the world; people who stop and forget their agenda to lend a helping hand, people who simply appreciate the small and beautiful things in the world, people who really, really try to make a difference in their community, families simply taking time to be families and love each other through all their faults.
I don’t know why one thing can remind me simultaneously of polar opposites. All I know is that it makes me all the more thankful. I sit here full of love and peace and I think about all the injustice in the world and it just makes me thankful.
At first, I feel a bubble of panic begin to rise from deep within me; panic from the thought of all that is going wrong in our world. But then, I feel so thankful and full of joy, because I get to be HERE in this peaceful moment at the end of a glorious, uneventful day, despite all the injustice in the world.
Our world is broken. It’s full of broken people with broken ideas. We run on a broken system. And our hearts and minds are broken again and again. But why can’t there be joy? Joy that we’ve been given this world. Joy that we get to love and be loved by those broken people. Joy that broken things can be mended by the Ultimate Healer. Joy that He gives us those glorious, uneventful days.
And maybe, just maybe those glorious, uneventful days were given to us to create hope and energy for the road ahead. Because when the time comes, we’ll need to remember that “there is some good left in the world...and it’s worth fighting for.”1
I don’t even know what the main point of this post is about; I just felt compelled to write it. So whatever you take from this, I guess I just wanted to remind you that there STILL IS good in this world.
Don’t stop at the financial crisis of America. Don’t stop at the terror of ISIS. Don’t stop at the number of abortions that occur every year. Don’t stop at the tsunamis or the earthquakes or the tornadoes. Don’t stop at the jihad, the corrupt congressmen or your stick-in-the-mud neighbor.
You can’t stop at any of those things because the picture is so much bigger than that. And the key is to remember that the sun still shines, your heart keeps beating, people still fight for the good in this world, and God is still the omnipotent Lord in control of the Universe.
Don’t stop. Zoom out. Zoom out and see all of the good in this world.
1. Sam Gamgee. "The Return of the King." Producer: Peter Jackson.
