Psalm 119:133-136

“My eyes shed streams of tears because your law is not kept.” vs. 136

As the psalmist surveyed the lives of those around him, at times his heart overflowed with sadness at the mess some folks were making of the precious days that God had given them. We know that feeling! Sometimes it’s members of our own families who continually make wrong choices and who regularly experience brokenness in daily living. Many times, not always those choices have involved a callous disregard for the moral and ethical codes that God has planted in our DNA. By experience we’ve learned that words cannot change them–all we can do is love them and pray–and cry on our beds for them. At other times it’s society as a whole that breaks our hearts. There’s just so much ugliness and pure cruelty in our world. We see the images in our video feeds, and our minds are shocked. How can people treat each other so horribly? Children are being killed, suffering is commonplace…and the world seems helpless or unwilling to effect change. And all because we’re unable for one reason or another to follow the basic rules of conduct that most of us learned in kindergarten. It’s not that any of us have attained perfection. We all have flaws and regularly lapse into sin. But there’s a sadness for humanity that persists in our lives–and that’s why some days our eyes too shed streams of tears.

Thought for the Day: How do I deal with the pain of the world?