So much of the media centers around gloom and doom and economic woes, corruption, war, and scores of problems that plague our world. I fear that our 24/7 news outlets resemble more the voyeurism we find on the freeway, where traffic gets backed up due to people not being in a car wreck, rather lines of cars queue up to simply get a look at someone else’s misfortune.

We’re in danger of becoming a cynical culture that peddles more pessimism than hope and now with the latest and greatest technology, this fascination that pockets of humanity has with the fall of other people, can now go viral. My hope is that with all of the current protests going on, whether it’s Wall Street or Greece, whether it’s in the West or the Majority World, people don’t forget to hope, to point to something better, to say at least a few things that remind us of something beautiful.

Haiti.  It is hard to imagine.

Tucked in the somewhat artificial security of middle-class American suburbia, I found my mind continually drifting back to this tragedy, trying to make sense of it.  The poverty of the area, the magnitude of the earthquake, the depth and breadth of the hardship and grief.  Because even though I could offer some theological explanations for the existence of evil and adversity in the world, there is still the reality of the personal suffering and pain.

If you think about it, the large-magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti could hit any of us.  Especially for those of us living in northern California.  So I live in this weird juxtaposition: I sip my latte and pray for Haiti.

Honestly, it paralyzed my blogging for a time.  I felt that anything I had to say in terms of faith and the arts paled in comparison to the larger issues of life and death, tragedy and circumstance, God's will and the brevity of human life.