News Flash: A baby goes missing in a hospital, and
immediately a code is announced over the intercom, and everyone stops what they
are doing to search for the baby until it is found.
What I find interesting about this article of news is its
focus on one little anonymous baby, whose indeterminate fate is brought to our
attention. This upsets us. It hurts our feelings just to think of what might
happen, that maybe the baby was stolen, because it reminds us that we share the
world with people who do evil on purpose. However, every single day there are
babies, children, women, and men in this world who suffer horribly at the hands
of others and whose fate is not brought to our attention. We do not hear, for
them, a code announced over the intercom, nor does everyone stop whatever else
they were doing and work together immediately to save them from their fate.
At every moment, we can choose to consider the fates of such
individuals in trouble or we can choose to think about something else. When we
humans think about people or animals who suffer and for whom we believe we have
no way of alleviating their suffering, it gives us feelings of anger and
helplessness and physically makes us sick. It raises our blood pressure and
cortisol levels, and gives us hardening of the arteries, difficulty eating and
sleeping, and indigestion. The use of anything which can distract our attention
away from its focus on those who suffer makes us feel better.
We can turn our attention to work. We can work hard, in the
belief that our activity will make the world a better place and therefore help
individuals. We can distract ourselves by watching suffering on TV and
comforting ourselves with the knowledge that it is not real life that is
playing out before us, but a carefully scripted act.
Or, we can pray.
Or, we can pray.
Setting our thoughts on God, the ultimate higher good, does
make us feel better. It can help us to forget for the moment that suffering
exists, as we focus on the good that exists. When we do choose to focus on the
suffering of the world, and we place our attention on the suffering of the
Christ rather than on the suffering of helpless people and animals, whose fate
we cannot change, we give a different meaning to that suffering, which helps to
take away those feelings of anger and helplessness that might otherwise make us
sick. We may be personally helpless to make evil go away, so we pray to the
all-powerful God who is not helpless. We attribute meaning to the suffering of
people as having a real purpose in God's greater plan, even though we do not
understand it.
