“There’s nothing good left in the world anymore.” These words were spoken to me by a grandmother sitting next to her grandson’s bed in the trauma room at VCU Medical center. It’s easy to wonder where the good is when you are scared and anxious.
It is easy to wonder where the good is when you hear that nearly 300 girls were kidnapped just because they were trying to get an education.
It is easy to wonder where the good is when two teens are shot on a playground near an elementary school and dozens of kids go running for their lives at the sound of gunfire near another playground.
The list could go on and on and on. Everywhere we look we see places where tragedy has struck and lives have been forever changed. “You do everything right, and still this happens. You can’t control everything.”
Perhaps that is where we begin to find the good, in the idea that we can’t control everything or everyone. When we begin to accept that we are not in control of everything, we can begin to see ourselves as no better and no worse than anyone else. It is then that we are able to reach out to God and to those around us in order to find comfort and then offer comfort to others, to find and offer peace, to experience the presence of God and then be that presence to others.
Perhaps we begin to see the good when millions of people around the world demonstrate solidarity and shared outrage with fathers and mothers in pain who just want their daughters back.
Perhaps we begin to see the good when neighborhoods stand up to violence and come together stronger and more determined.
Perhaps we begin to see the good when we take those whose vision is temporarily clouded by pain, and help to open their eyes to the knowledge that if they look, they will see God sits and weeps along with them. May we do no less.