These strange ashes

But these strange ashes, Lord, this nothingness,

This baffling sense of loss?

The last two days have been very difficult.  And again I'm at a loss for what to say.  The more of life I experience here the harder it is to write about any of it. I've thought about various explanations for that, but the most convincing one is the overwhelmingly depressing nature of the events I have to share.  If I had a couple “feel good” stories or at least some situation had turned out surprisingly well, then I'm sure there'd be something I'd want to write. But I'm not getting there. In the broad view almost nothing feels good, and every welcome surprise has only briefly delayed the inevitable heartbreak.

We knew this would be a tough place to live when we came. That's why we're here. But is it too much of a cliché to say that we didn't know it would be this tough? Every month brings more illness, more deaths, more violence, more affairs, more lost jobs and lost homes and sadness.

Did we happen to get a group of friends going through an especially difficult stretch of events? Or if we had a different group of friends, would we just be privy to a different set of heartbreak? I know it can't be this bad for everyone who lives in our slum. But we aren't even close to living with the poorest people in our slum, which is not even close to the poorest slum in the city, which is not even close to the poorest city in the country. And there are a lot of worse-off countries in the world. So while it might not be this bad for everyone, there are hundreds of millions (or billions) of people for who it is exactly this bad.

Which is what keeps me going. Because I know that they'll still be here, whether I'm here or not. And I love them. And out of love, I choose by whatever small degree to live with them and suffer with them, in the hope that we may some day together be able to take some of this suffering away. And I know that even if I lived somewhere else where I didn't have to know them, didn't have to suffer with them, I would still know they were here suffering. And to not be there with them is too much for my heart to take.

A story is told of Jesus and His disciples walking one day along a stony road. Jesus asked each of them to choose a stone to carry for Him. John, it is said, chose a large one while Peter chose the smallest. Jesus led them then to the top of a mountain and commanded that the stones be made bread. Each disciple, by this time tired and hungry, was allowed to eat the bread he held in his hand, but of course Peter's was not sufficient to satisfy his hunger. John gave him some of his.

Some time later Jesus again asked the disciples to pick up a stone to carry. This time Peter chose the largest of all. Taking them to a river, Jesus told them to cast the stones into the water. They did so, but looked at one another in bewilderment.

“For whom,” asked Jesus, “did you carry the stone?”

(quotes from Amy Carmichael and Elizabeth Elliot)