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Mothers burying children, healthy bodies with minds that have forgotten, healthy minds with bodies being eaten away by dread diseases, marriages disintegrating, children paying the price, husbands or fathers that never come home again. How do I explain it all to a 12 yo, a 10 yo, a 6 yo and a 4 yo? How about to me? It makes me weep. No, it makes me cry, that's an uglier word to fit this ugliness.

All these things are piling up this year and we're only 1/2 way through 2012. What will the rest of 2012 bring? How can we hope for something better? Without hope the heart grows sick. We can't hope in circumstances that's for sure. And it's hard to hope in a God that drops these kinds of events on us without warning. But I guess we are warned: for in this life we should expect trouble. That's actually a promise to Christians, isn't it. So there must be an equal promise regarding how to navigate the nightmare. And why shouldn't it be a nightmare? This is not our home, our permanent residence is somewhere else. Our hearts are built for eternity. I guess that's the promise to hope in, that those deepest desires that have been planted in us as our hearts first began to beat will be fulfilled. That's a pretty long term hope. It's the everyday grind where the struggle lies isn't it.