I have had many discussions with my friend Michael trying to get a grasp on how much we are to bear as a people. The internet has opened the floodgates of information and given news media an even larger ability to stir our emotions as tragedies happen, it has opened the floodgates for information of people far from us to become an intimate part of our thinking and our hearts.  We now are in a time when the tragedies from far away impact us wherever we are.

I’m not sure that we are created to bear so much sorrow, to be called to pray for so many so intimately.

There was a time when the news came slowly, and I know that there would be challenges with that…the fact that you wouldn’t hear for a very long time about the death of a loved one, or a tragedy would be well over when the news reached the other part of the country, let alone the world. Each step of technology has brought news more quickly and made our world smaller. Radio, newsreels, television, internet. Now we are hit with news of all our friends near and wide on Facebook, and even those we do not know…the news of children suffering and of families facing great challenges. We are impacted emotionally and spiritually by all these stories, and I’m not sure our souls were made to carry so much.

Sometimes I think that we become incapable to reach out locally because we are overwhelmed by the needs of too many.

My heart has been broken along with the rest of the world as I have watched the events of Sandy Hook. I’ve avoided most of the news and filtered things so that I was not overwhelmed. I have, however, looked at each sweet face and I have prayed. I have been unable to look at my own 6 year old without thinking of shattered families. Today, though, I know that I have to release them back to their community. I do not have the right to grieve in the same way that those who knew these sweet souls and brave souls do. I grieve as a spectator. They grieve as a family, and I have to trust that they will care for one another well and they deserve to have their grief to themselves.

I was not made to bear the sorrows of all the country, or of all believers.

I was made to bear the sorrows, the joys and the trials and struggles with those within my grasp. My real, physical grasp. I can tell you the challenges that friends are facing around the country, but there are those within my grasp that I do not know their struggles. I have not reached out to them to weep and to walk alongside.

Sandy Hook shook us, and it should. We should spend time on our knees and we should grieve and we should hold our own children closer. But, we do not own their tragedy and it is theirs to walk through in intimacy that struggle brings…without spectators.

Somehow I need to translate the emotions that have been stirred by this horror to those around me who may not have as staggering a trial, but still are feeling hopeless and overwhelmed and grieving.

A few years ago I wanted to take a whole year with no internet. That didn’t pan out, and I realized that I have friends I rely on who I connect with through internet. It is not all bad. There are great things that the internet brings, and relationships are part of the blessing. Still….I think we have to learn to know our limitations in carrying suffering and sorrow.

There is only One who can carry the sorrows and the grieving and the struggles of the whole world.  I can weep and mourn because this was a tragedy and is not to be shrugged off as just part of a fallen world. Then I need to release them back to their community with a blessing that God may work in the intimacy of their relationships where they can physically care for one another and weep together without distraction of being watched by the world.