when words fail.

So I generally don’t talk about current events on this ol bloggity. Newsworthy events that by the time you get back to this piece will surely be old hat. Events that will likely be old hat by the time I get around to sharing this collection of words with you. Or possibly the truth that it’s nearly impossible to discuss current events without sounding like a broken record bleeding heart.

But I stumbled across a particularly interesting article on NPR the other day. If you missed it, I’ll just summarize by saying that the Central African Republic is a hot mess, and those people are clearly experiencing Hell on earth.  And the international media is mostly ignoring the problem.

Which isn’t really news. There are a lot of people on this planet who go through Hell every single minute of every day. Which is probably why the media would rather tell you about Miley Cyrus’s new outfit than another international crisis. Because they don’t want to sound like a broken record either.

For some reason this particular story came like a swift kick in the gut. Driving along listening to this tale on the radio I had a vision. One of rebel soldiers storming my house and me handing my children each a box of granola bars and pointing them to the neighbor’s woods with the instruction to flee for their lives. Knowing full well that my oldest son is months away from being old enough to be rounded up as a child soldier in the LRA, and it won’t take much time for my girls to be old enough to be considered for marriage.

But instead of fleeing for their lives my kids are permitted to bicker over which movie to pick on Netflix and shop for cute winter boots at the mall.

And when I think about social injustice in terms of my own offspring there really aren’t words. Just tears.

But as I ponder over the insanity of it all I keep coming back to this truth; if Jesus didn’t let the world fall apart, then He would have no reason to come back and rescue us from ourselves.

So with this little reminder I’ll exhale. Kiss my babies, chuckle at their “conflicts”, and thank the good Lord that we’ve dodged another bullet. Literally.

Thank you Jesus for my first world problems.

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