God's pencil

Yesterday we went to the infirmary here near St Anne's Bay. We all got a chance to sit and visit with some of the people there, and boy was there a variety of people there. Our visit was prefaced by Fr Geoff saying along the lines of, "you might get a little emotional, and you might feel something powerful...but you shouldn't be surprised because this is exactly where Jesus said we would find him."

Visiting the infirmary is a tough thing to digest, or should I say the circumstances that warrant the existence of it. Because of the poverty, this type of place seems almost like a place where people who are handicapped or injured are just put because no one knows what to do with them. The question is always brought up: what is the point of life for these people? We feel bad saying it, but there is an element of empathy for them in this because we feel bad for their situation. Most people don't want to see others in the state of being that these people are in, and because so many of them are so close to the brink of death, it almost seems logical that God should take them home...Why doesn't he?

I have been doing a lot of thinking this week, and I can't answer this question, but I've come up with my own thought: Life is full of circumstances and we must share in them. There will always be pain in the world, there will always be suffering and despair. There are those that have no choice to go through it, and there are those of us that do have that choice. But the suffering belongs to ALL of us, and we must share it. Just as Jesus died on the cross for all of us, and shared in our individual sufferings, we so must replicate that action. There is a part of that pain that one of the patients at the infirmary is going through that belongs to me, and I need to own it. And that is a value that we can retract from this situation. If God is love, then he exists within the action of this service; of course nothing is more powerful or more valuable than God himself. Sure, there is a lot of work in the world that needs to be done, but this suffering in the world can become a great and profound catalyst for an outpouring of love to those who need it. Joel Osteen once said "when the world gives us waves of grief, God gives us waves of grace", and if we believe that we are the pencils in God's hand as he is writing a love letter to the world (Blessed Mother Teresa), then we must act and share in this suffering. We must do what we can to go to the infirmaries in the world, and play with the children at the community centers, and feed the hungry as much as possible, so that we may share the suffering and the pain WITH them. Will we always be perfect? NO! Of course not! But when the time comes that we realize there is more that we might be able to do, instead of feeling bad about our shortcomings, we should embrace our humanity but still try to do more. After all, pencils need to be sharpened every now and then.