Our World

When I was much younger (and admittedly more naive), I used to think that bad things had only happened in the past and that we lived in a much more civilized time. The Holocaust, senseless wars, massive killings and other atrocities - those were all for previous generations, but ours would be smarter...and better.

In my lifetime - a short 26 years - our world has seen the Rwandan Genocide, September 11th, the Oklahoma City bombing, and countless more in the U.S. and other countries. Now add to that list the tragedy yesterday at Virginia Tech. For some reason, news of the event struck me like never before. One of my coworkers made the remark that her boys were about to graduate from high school and she thought she could finally breathe a sigh of relief that nothing like this had happened at their school. Now, in August they're off to college, where, for some reason, we didn't think these kinds of things happened. As she said, "It can happen anywhere." Such is the world we live in. No place is safe from such evil. Although I may not live in constant fear and danger, I am painfully aware that those things (at least in part) characterize our world.

How is it that creation (humans included) is simultaneously awe-inspiring, wonderful, beautiful, good - and also base, selfish, ugly and evil? Babies were born yesterday - new lives created. Somewhere someone did something selfless for someone else - generating hope. Yesterday, the beauty of creation lauded God's magnificence and power as it does everyday ... and 33 people were killed for no reason. It just doesn't make sense. How apparent is it that we are in need of a savior to reconcile creation to its creator?