An emotional response

I saw a video yesterday of someone in Iraq carrying a wounded child away from a bombing, and my heart went out to that person.  The video was about 3 seconds long -- just long enough to convey the anxious look on the man's face as he passed the camera.  Then I read today about bombings in Pakistan and heard a follow-up report analyzing the bombs in Iraq.  My emotional response is to think, "When will all this senseless violence end?"  The Muslim world must have some kind of response to this terrible news, but all the formal diplomatic responses and blame-shifting must be some small comfort to that man in the video.  Our news has a "bomb of the day" aspect to it -- it is unsettling to focus on the human tolls of these tragedies, so our news doesn't dwell on them.  But that one man in the news clip conveyed the ache that must be in the hearts of so many who see the same thing, day in, day out, repeated over and over again -- the violence that rips apart societies and individual lives; the poverty and despair of so many people in the Muslim world and around the world.  I know that if I had to endure the pain of the world for one second, it would be so unbearable that it would crush me in an instant.  That's part of what makes Jesus' sacrifice on the cross so amazing.  Jesus took on human flesh and bone and endured pain and suffering that is indescribable in physical terms.  But the spiritual pain of having the sins of the world thrust upon his shoulders, including things like 9-11 and the bombings I just mentioned -- must have been even more indescribable.  The kicker in all this is that he didn't do it because we deserved it -- he did it while we were still sinners so that we could live. And he is waiting, (waiting!) for the remnant of the world to be saved, enduring all this spiritual pain still, so that we can have a chance to reach more people for him.