Jesus

"Jesus."

It was all I could mutter when a nurse down the hall brought her phone. The live stream showed the recent aftermath of the Boston explosion.

"Jesus, help us."

I cannot pretend to know their fear, their pain.

My father and I were having this conversation recently-the one that is being played across Twitter, Facebook, and in living rooms.

What is the world coming to? When did our world get so bad? What has happened?

Today, I wanted to skip the allergy shots and homework, bunker down in our first floor apartment and wait.

But the shot needed gotten, the dog was still at the vet. We were almost out of milk.

My dad pointed out that every generation imagines itself the worst, the hardest-working, living in the most dangerous world there is.

We have 9/11, Sandy Hook, and now Boston.
The 90s had Oklahoma City, Columbine.
The 80s had the Iranian Hostage Crisis, attempted assassination of Reagan. Apartheid
The 70s had Vietnam, Agent Orange, SDS bombings.
The 60s had the Civil Rights Movements, the killings of Civil rights activists near Philadelphia, bombings including one that took 4 beautiful Birmingham girls in the House of the Lord.
The 50s had the Cold War, bomb shelters, imminent threats of Nuclear War.
The 40s had Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Auschwitz.
And so it went on, each generation with its on fears, threats, and dangers.

"We didn't have to worry when we were kids." Quoted by people from 25 to 60.

Thought @ 35, I remember somehow knowing Adam Walsh's head was found severed from his body, harmed by scary people somewhere in broad daylight. He had been in K-Mart.

News reports from when I was in the first grade, a white van abducting children. My brother at 10, taking a knife to school.

My mother remembers her high school classmate murdering his stepmother, 50 years ago in a quiet Mississippi town.

Recent society can recall Jonestown, anthrax-tainted mail, Son of Sam, Oklahoma City, the assassinations of Robert and John Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

A generation or two removed recall the bombs of Berlin and Paris, suicides as the stock market plunged, bread lines, rations.

Graves hold the fears and stories of those who came before: Jesse James, the Titanic, the assignation of Frans Ferdinand, the Civil War, Jim Crow.

The tragedy the human heart can inflict is rivaled only by the resilience of the human soul.

May Jesus carry those affected by the tragedy of today.

May he make the rest of us brave so that we will carry own in this world because He has work for us to do. And how selfish of us to wish His return before every soul can hear of Him.