I got out of work this morning after 24 hours of solid work - a baby at noon, another minutes after midnight, and a full day in the office as well. Turned on the radio to hear about the news from London and listened for the hour drive home. All thoughts of sleep disappeared as I thought about how my colleagues in London, all the doctors, nurses, midwives, etc, are probably totally mobilized and working in the kind of organized chaos that inevitably follows any major disaster (natural or un-).
My thoughts went back to last year's Madrid train bombings and how worried I was about fellow blogger Robert Duncan. Robert came through that event OK and later was the driving force behind the revitalization of the Spero Forum.
Then I thought back to the 9/11 attacks, and how nurses and doctors waited for hours for an expected onrush of injured - only to realize that most had died.
Then my thoughts wandered to the other disasters through which I had personally lived - the 6.8 Northridge Earthquake (1/17/1994) being the biggest and closest to home for me.
God has been incredibly merciful, but the sheer volume and scale of human trauma that we have been through in the last few years is exhausting. One can't help but wonder if the four horseman of the apocalypse have indeed been sent forth. Or maybe it is just that we now learn of disasters within hours if not minutes of the first casualty reports.
I am weary, and I know that part of it is just sheer physical exhaustion, but also thinking about how much suffering there really is in the world. I know that I alone am truly helpless to make a big difference, but I can always pray. And I can also try to do as Mother Teresa suggests - small things faithfully.
