An email from World Vision: 1 million homeless.

A letter from St. Jude Children’s Hospital: more than 10,000 children will learn they have cancer this year.

Another email from Not For Sale: 27 million slaves in the world today.

And, as I type this, a tweet: corruption and violence in Sudan continue unchecked.

I am overwhelmed. I read Madeleine L’Engle’s January 28 entry from Glimpses of Grace (yes, accidentally a day early).

When I am bombarded on the evening news with earthquake, flood, fire, it is too much for me. There is a mechanism, a safety valve, which cuts off our response to overexposure to suffering.

But…when the gentleman who cleans the building in which the Cathedral library is located talks to me about his family in Guatemala, rejoicing because they are alive although their house has been destroyed by earthquake…I am more able to learn what it is that I can and ought to do, even if this seems, and is, inadequate.

But neither was Jesus adequate to the situation. He did not feed all the poor, only a few. He did not heal all the lepers, or give sight to all the blind, or drive out all the unclean spirits.

That helps me. If I felt that I had to conquer all the ills of the world I’d likely sit back and do nothing at all. But if my job is to feed one stranger, then the money I give to world relief will be dug down deeper from my pocket than it would if I felt I had to succeed in feeding the entire world.

Thanks, Madam L’Engle. You have once again helped me see.

You are never more like Christ than when you are choked with compassion over the brokenness of others.
- Brennan Manning

“…the magnitude of this catastrophe is enormous.”

I felt small as I read the email from World Vision. Like most everyone, I’ve been catching snippets of information and news feeds of images from Haiti’s devastating earthquake. And, with reality setting in, I am at a loss as to how to respond.

As a new mom whose heart has been softened to the ways people, especially infants and children, suffer, I long to go to Haiti and hold the hands of so many children who are tragically scarred – physically, emotionally, and mentally. Their precious, tender lives will never be the same. Some have lost mothers and fathers. Some have lost limbs. All have lost their innocence and security. I want to hug them close in their losing. But I can’t do that. I just can’t. It’s not an option right now.

And I want to give financially. But what I don’t want to do, what I won’t do, is blindly throw money at some relief organization so that I can alleviate my survivor guilt and, simultaneously, pat myself on the back for being kind to those less fortunate than I. I did my part, thank you very much. Now, please, let me go on living my safe and comfortable life here in my affluent, earthquake-proof home.

So what I’d really like to know is: what does love do in a tragedy of this immensity? What does active mercy look like from a couple thousand miles away?

I know it’s the opposite of Pat Robertson’s and Rush Limbaugh’s rhetoric. I know it’s the opposite of complacency and indifference. But I don’t know what it is.

Maybe it’s a bunch of messy, complex things. Maybe it’s awareness. Maybe it’s just letting my heart be broken. Maybe it’s giving time to ask God’s mercy, grace, and shalom on these displaced souls. Maybe it’s going without a few cups of tea at the local coffee shop so we can send more money to the Red Cross or World Vision’s relief efforts. Maybe it’s going there, someday, with Jude — or to some other place where a natural disaster has wreaked havoc. Maybe it’s asking these kind of questions.

I am small. But the world is small, too. My neighbor is not just the woman across the street or the teenagers next door. My neighbor is the raped mother in Darfur. The prostituted little girl in Cambodia. The orphaned boy in the streets of Port-au-Prince. And I am called to love my neighbor as I love myself.

So what would I want someone to do for me… scratch that. What would I want someone to do for my son if he was homeless and alone in the aftermath of an earthquake.

Hold his hand.
Think of him.
Send clean water.
Give him food.

Maybe when we finally put ourselves in another set of shoes and walk around for a time, we are that much closer to being like Jesus. That much closer to some sort of answer in an age of so many unanswerable questions. That much closer to love.

Photo Credit: Red Cross