Arguably the most well known opening to any poem, although I don’t know the author, is:

       Laugh, and the world laughs with you

       weep, and you weep alone.

I have felt overwhelmed in recent days.

On Saturday there was the attack on the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi. An estimated 68 people have been killed but the final body count, we are told, will be much higher. Nearly 1,200 Anglican leaders will be in Kenya in less than a month for GAFCON 2013.

On Sunday in Peshawar, Pakistan, two suicide bombers murdered up to 200 members of All Saints Anglican Church as they met in the church grounds for lunch after the morning meeting.

All this against the backdrop of the violent civil war in Syria and the most recent round of civil unrest in Egypt. The body count in Syria has passed 100,000. There are more than 2 million desperate souls seeking refuge in surrounding countries. Up to half the country’s population has been displaced. The whole nation is in trauma.

The staff at Anglican Aid constantly struggle with the issue of which need do we respond to. We are a small agency with a generous and faithful group of both regular and casual donors. We have many ongoing commitments to partners as they serve their communities in sustainable development activities with the resources we supply. Emergency appeals can often deplete those resources.

Not a day goes by that we don’t get at least one request for help from a needy part of the world. In the last 24 hours I have received four.

As we were discussing these issues this week an email came through with pictures attached from one of our partners who cares for and provides education for blind and albino children in rural Tanzania.

We learnt that there are 150,000 albino children in Tanzania, the largest number of any African other country. These children live with disability, stigma and danger. They are considered by some in their nation who have a very bizarre world view to be less than human. Witchdoctors want their body parts, believing that mixing them up in a cocktail of animal parts and other ingredients, they produce a magic potion to ward off evil spirits and all kinds of ailments. Our Christian partner provides whatever protection they can from potential kidnappers and murderers.

My body trembled. I wept quietly. I needed to go for a walk. I struggled to put words into prayer.

How do you triage a world’s pain?

As the CEO of Anglican Aid I am under no false illusions about what we are able to achieve. I have never subscribed to the triumphalism mantra to Make Poverty History. Jesus tells me what human nature is like. The symptoms of sin such as abuse, exploitation and injustice will always be with us.

But I take great comfort and confidence from the fact that the little you do and the little I do and the little we collectively do through Anglican Aid, combined with the little that many others are able to do, makes a world of difference in the lives of real people, in real pain, needing real friends, and above all needing the forgiveness, the friendship and the hope of the One who knew how to weep for a world in need.

So, although I hesitated yesterday as I wrote a letter to every Rector and every parish in our diocese asking us all to consider, not one, but three urgent needs, I pressed the send button anyway.

Did I fail to overcome the temptation to ask for too much? Was I victorious over the temptation to ask for too little?

For the simple answer to my question, for me personally, is that I don’t know how to triage a world’s pain. Behind every mind-numbing statistic is a person in pain. A person just like me; with a family, perhaps with vulnerable children and frail-age parents, with friends and with hopes and dreams.

We are well acquainted with the tears of Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus. We know that he wept over a city, whose centuries of rebellion, indifference and carelessness towards God’s gracious word and the unfolding promise of the coming of their King, brought them under God’s judgement.

Perhaps less familiar to us are the words of ‘Jesus’ sermon’ in Luke 6:

       Blessed are you who weep now,

       for you will laugh

 

       But woe to you who are rich,

       for you have already received your comfort

It has always bemused me (not in a happy way) that the volume of preached and printed words commenting on Matthew Chapter 5 has far outweighed those commenting on Luke 6 by a zillion to almost zero.

What does it mean to weep now in a world obsessed with laughter and levity?

What does it mean to be rich now in a world in which a small minority of the world’s population gorge itself on the massive majority of the world’s resources?

As I ask these questions you need to know that I’m not a naturally melancholy person. My cup is always on the fuller side of halfway (with an imaginary ’85 Grange to boot).

But is it not for the followers of Jesus to weep as he weeps? Is it not for the rich Christian like me and you to share our wealth in the service of others?

Let us not let the world weep alone. Jesus didn’t. He wept with a grieving family, had compassion on a shepherdless people and lamented over a careless city.

Like Jesus, let us mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15).

Let us share our food with the hungry and provide the poor wanderer (displaced person?) with shelter (Isaiah 58:7).

Let us proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom to a lost and careless world (Matthew 24:14).

Through Anglican Aid’s urgent appeals to get Tanzanian leaders to GAFCON 2013, to get emergency aid to Christians in Peshawar, Syrians in Egypt, the blind and albino children in Tanzania we can do all these things.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up (Galatians 6:9).

Feature photo: honikum