Is It Nothing to You, All Who Pass By

Lam 1:12 "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me, that the LORD brought on me in the day of his fierce anger?

xYou might have heard of Kevin Carter. Carter was a famous South African photographer who won the Pulitzer Price for feature photography. He was the first to shoot a picture of a South African "Necklacing", execution by a tire filled with gasoline forced around a person's body which was set afire. He experienced the gruesome side of human nature.

xHis prize photograph was of a starving Sudanese girl, about 5, who was trying to walk to a food station. The little body was so weak it could hardly move. In the background of the picture, a vulture was waiting for the child to die.

xCarter says that he shooed the vulture away, but nothing more. His report is that the small child began to walk on her own. What happened to the child, no one knows. On July 27, 1994, Carter put his camera down and took his own life at the age of 33, his friends contending that he suffered from doing nothing for the child when he could have.

xI don't know the truth of the last claim, but I do know this: Jeremiah's question in Lamentations rings out loudly and clearly today. Jerusalem, in its day, was begging, hoping, that somebody would help and try to change; it never happened. Our world today is Satanic chaos: jobs gone, family relationships devastated, finances at an all time low, and at this writing people are even walking around Vandalia with medical masks in fear of the H1N1 or Swine Flu. We don't know what to do. My prayer is that our dying breath will be "Yes, God, we care for you, for your Son, for our churches, and for our world."

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Father, please teach us to look past the chaos of the world and see you. Help us to look into your heart and love Christ and others through Him. In Jesus name, Amen!