January 4, 2009: Our Wake Up Call

Every now and then something happens that wakes us from a somnambulant state and forces us to see the world around us.
Sometimes it is a personal tragedy: the death of a loved one, the sickness of a friend, the dissolution of a marriage that was deemed idyllic.
And other times it is the rumblings of the world around us which tell us, all is not right.
This may manifest as natural disasters, societal discord, epidemics, etc.
What does it take, though, for a collective stirring, a wake-up call for the masses?
Does life have to smack us personally in the face before we take notice of suffering around us?
Too often we feel insulated and removed from the incident. Too often we feel lethargic, apathetic. So often we feel that when the television goes blank, so follows the world.
But lives continue to be destroyed; children are killed, or orphaned, or hungry; people are praying with their last breaths for their family's safety; and we, we sleep on...
But try as many may to ignore the suffering of those whom some even consider insignificant, it will come back to haunt them.
Indeed, it will come to haunt us all.
For, although the hands may remain complacently still, the hearts are indelibly written upon, and they will circulate that silence to bereft mothers' cries out into the empty night,
until no one is left sleeping.

God help us to help; help us to care.
Ameen