mgpcpastor's blog

Reflections on the emotional experience of reacting to recurring situations that are losing their capacity to shock.
Published in our local paper today.

The news of the terrible attacks in Paris (and the bombings in Beruit) seem to be giving rise to a different emotional response to the way people responded to September 11 or the Bali bombing.
There is less an experience of surprise and, in its place, a growing sense of sadness that something anticipated has occurred. The emotions that follow, shock, sorrow for the victims, empathy with the terrorised, outrage at the perpetrators, and a desire for some action that would resolve the issue are similar, but we’re no longer surprised.
That lack of surprise, the sadness of knowing that atrocities such as these are part of our world, part of the experience of places and people very much like ourselves, can leave something that feels very much like a weight that just sits on us.
On a more personal level, I’ve known people whose personal lives have taken them into a similar emotional terrain. They joked with me that the obituary column in the paper dictated their social lives. It seemed to them that most weeks they’d be catching up with friends at funerals. Of course, there’d be one less friend each time. They were no longer shocked by the death of those they knew, instead there was this growing wistful expectation.
Others would show me four-litre ice-cream buckets (this was in the days before Webster packs) full of various medications. Up until what seemed like a few years previously they’d never taken anything in their lives. Now each visit to the doctor would bring another script. No more surprise.
This emotional terrain isn’t the sole province of the old, of course. There are people for whom a job application rejection becomes the norm. Others who basically expect their relationship will end, because all the others have. People who don’t think they deserve happiness, and for whom disappointment is not a surprise but a constant visitor.
I learned that there wasn’t really any value in trying to get people who felt that way to cheer up. There are seasons of life and experiences that are very tough. Many of them encouraged me by letting me know that the security and peace that are based on what’s around us is a very fragile life, and what was important was that which comes from within.
They took the words of Jesus: ‘Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’ to heart. It seems telling to me that the Bible records that the people who had the greatest affinity to Jesus were those whose lives were lived on the margins.
But a relationship with Jesus doesn’t change circumstances. It’s a relationship that changes the way circumstances are experienced and calls on those who know Jesus to look outward in love and compassion rather than inward to have their needs met.
There’s a lot of sadness in the world. So much sadness that eventually it will no longer shock. But Jesus offers a path in which sadness need not overwhelm us or define who we are or how we respond.