Sam and I can’t help wondering like a lot of other people how you ever make sense of something as insane the Boston Marathon bombings. Problem is, you can never make sense of something like that or the Newton school murders or any of the other dastardly acts by people so angry and intent on destroying others.
Our friend Sara passed this saying from Anne Frank on to us. Remember Anne Frank, the little Jewish girl who hid with her family from the Nazis but finally was found and subsequently died in a concentration camp?
"It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart." - Anne Frank.
We used to argue in one of my high school classes whether people were inherently good or evil. We never arrived at an answer - no surprise. Incidentally, I portrayed Anne’s father in our high school production of The Diary of Anne Frank. How did he and other survivors of the Holocaust manage to pull their lives together after that massive act of inhumanity to others?
Rather than try to make sense of bombings and shootings and mayhem that hurt or kill innocent people, the only thing I can do is try to remember and dwell on the goodness that also occurs all around me. Even Sam seems to need reassurance sometimes. This morning he woke me up at 3:30 a.m. I got up to let him have a drink of water and go outside to pee, which is what he usually wants when he wakes me up, but he ran over to the couch, jumped up on it and clearly beckoned to me with his little brown eyes, “Come sit with me.” I sat with him thinking I would take him outside when he was ready, but he snuggled tight up against me, laid his head in my lap and went back to sleep. I put my arm around him and I swear he burrowed even deeper beside me. We sat that way until Kathleen got up at 5:30 to get ready for work.
Sam is one of the god things in my life. I feel God’s love through him - through Kathleen too, and through our children. Other relatives and friends are God’s blessing too. Then you have blessings like the beauty of nature, the mountains, tulip fields, the Puget Sound.
I feel like this posting is a little jumbled today, but it isn’t always easy to make sense of what is happening around us. Bombings and shootings and those things do serve to make me cling tighter to my savior for reassurance just as Sam was clinging tighter to me this morning. I know it’s only by the grace of God that I am still alive.
Sometimes, with all the bad things happening, I feel like a homeless person trying to gain a little sustenance from stone soup. I told you the other day that I was reading a very good book about praying for strangers. I think I’ll be praying for the dead and maimed in Boston, just as I have been praying for the people who were shot in Newton, for a long, long time. When all else fails, I at least have prayer. That’s what keeps me sane. And that’s the straight poop
Our friend Sara passed this saying from Anne Frank on to us. Remember Anne Frank, the little Jewish girl who hid with her family from the Nazis but finally was found and subsequently died in a concentration camp?
"It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart." - Anne Frank.
We used to argue in one of my high school classes whether people were inherently good or evil. We never arrived at an answer - no surprise. Incidentally, I portrayed Anne’s father in our high school production of The Diary of Anne Frank. How did he and other survivors of the Holocaust manage to pull their lives together after that massive act of inhumanity to others?
Rather than try to make sense of bombings and shootings and mayhem that hurt or kill innocent people, the only thing I can do is try to remember and dwell on the goodness that also occurs all around me. Even Sam seems to need reassurance sometimes. This morning he woke me up at 3:30 a.m. I got up to let him have a drink of water and go outside to pee, which is what he usually wants when he wakes me up, but he ran over to the couch, jumped up on it and clearly beckoned to me with his little brown eyes, “Come sit with me.” I sat with him thinking I would take him outside when he was ready, but he snuggled tight up against me, laid his head in my lap and went back to sleep. I put my arm around him and I swear he burrowed even deeper beside me. We sat that way until Kathleen got up at 5:30 to get ready for work.
Sam is one of the god things in my life. I feel God’s love through him - through Kathleen too, and through our children. Other relatives and friends are God’s blessing too. Then you have blessings like the beauty of nature, the mountains, tulip fields, the Puget Sound.
I feel like this posting is a little jumbled today, but it isn’t always easy to make sense of what is happening around us. Bombings and shootings and those things do serve to make me cling tighter to my savior for reassurance just as Sam was clinging tighter to me this morning. I know it’s only by the grace of God that I am still alive.
Sometimes, with all the bad things happening, I feel like a homeless person trying to gain a little sustenance from stone soup. I told you the other day that I was reading a very good book about praying for strangers. I think I’ll be praying for the dead and maimed in Boston, just as I have been praying for the people who were shot in Newton, for a long, long time. When all else fails, I at least have prayer. That’s what keeps me sane. And that’s the straight poop
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