Don't look away. That's how a heart becomes calloused.
In Ukraine, we see mothers fleeing with children and beloved pets. Fathers saying tearful goodbyes. We see elderly devastated to know that in their own lifetime, we're repeating our past. We learn of mass graves—evidence of atrocities.
In Nigeria, we hear of hundreds of girls kidnapped and still not returned to their mothers and fathers.
In China, we hear rumors of Uighurs and Christians imprisoned and harvested for organs. Not to mention generations of women secretly mourning and haunted by forced abortions.
In DC, a whistleblower from a local abortuary delivers full-term and almost full-term babies' bodies to a known anti-abortion group—proof of murder according to current laws of this country (both the ban on partial-birth abortion and the Infant Born Alive Act) and more than ample proof to anyone with a vestige of moral conscience.
Unprepared for such grievous violence, we look away. Back to buttering bread, packing lunches, entertainment, smartphone scrolls—anything to help us forget how helpless (overwhelmed, angry, devastated, scared) it makes us feel.
On some level, this response is normal, even protective. I have to handle what's in front of me (like getting kids to school on time), but as a part of the Body of Christ I'm called to a deeper response to suffering. We are called to love by entering into the suffering, just as Christ does. Love that does not suffer with the suffering is not love at all.
We are called to enter into suffering with those who suffer. To feel it, be broken and MOVED by it, and MOVED to DO.
A heart grows hard when we look away because we don't enter into the suffering. Even if we don't know what to do, we know WHO does. As Christians, what excuse do we have to be unprepared for such suffering? Have we not been told of this even and more suffering to come?!
When suffering comes like a flood, wisdom says to continue to walk in the well-worn paths of faith and discipline. In these paths we encounter the God who reveals himself—through scripture and to us personally—and as he intervenes in the broken world around us.
We see God intervene time and again in the Old Testament in the lives of the Patriarchs and those who surrounded them. In Isaac’s story, God intervenes in Sarah and Abraham’s barrenness to bring about his own promises. God intervenes to select Isaac as Abraham’s sole inheritor. God intervenes to select a wife for Isaac. God intervenes when Isaac was going to head to Egypt just like his father—uncannily following in his footsteps. God intervenes in the strife among the Canaanites by prompting the king to make a duplicate treaty with Isaac. God intervenes when Isaac asks God to open Rebekah’s womb after she is barren for the first 20 years of their marriage.
Most memorably, God intervenes when Abraham is ready to sacrifice Isaac in obedience to God’s command, which in itself is a shadow of the greatest act of God intervening in the history of mankind to reconcile man to himself by sacrificing himself.
As we look for the God who intervenes, it guards our hearts against allowing the evil of human nature to turn our hearts to cynicism. We let suffering and evil instead drive us to our knees, placing our hope in the One who brings justice and mercy...the One who intervenes.
Within our own circles and daily paths, we must look for where God is intervening to partner as his hands and feet. One of the greatest needs of those who are suffering is to be seen. Not a glance and look away. Seen, and joined in fellow-suffering, then we look together for restoration, justice, and mercy.
We can't just see suffering and hopelessness. We need to train our eyes to see other things too: Sunrises. Sunsets. Laughter. Snuggles. Deep blue eyes that crinkle in the corners. Or blue with steel in them.
See and feel the suffering.
Be motivated to do.
See and take in the joy and care.
Be motivated to do.
Knowing that doing sometimes shows up best as being.
Embracing both keeps a heart pure and soft.
Jesus tells us: blessed are the pure, for they shall see God. Meaning, they will look for God and find him.
Grace enables us to see.