The news is horrific lately, and if you really let it sink in, one cannot hold back the tears.  Caged executions, slayings in Libya, the Copenhagan attacks, the Baga massacre, suicide bomber in Pakistan, the slaughter at Al-Anbar, the Peshawar school attack, and here on our own soil, this January’s Capitol bombing attempt, the Boston Marathon bombings, Benghazi, Fort Hood shootings, and of course, 9/11.  The violence is everywhere: The United States, Canada, Argentina, Europe, Russia, Turkey, Yemen, Israel, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, to name a few, as well as the brutality related to China’s suppression of Islam.

Some clench their fists and recite, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” to exert self-control so that a reactionary jab followed by a straight right is not launched in thoughtless retaliation or worse.  Others, so anesthetized by a false sense of reality that they numbly negotiate their days in a hypnotic trance, scarcely notice the headlines.  But what about you, what about me, the ones somewhere in between…the witnesses to our times?

I had an elderly friend who was but a girl in Germany at the time of the Holocaust.  Those days haunted her till the end.  When we would sit down for a meaningful discussion, she would always harken back to those atrocities and whimper, I didn’t know, we didn’t know.  I hope she found her peace in passing.  There are reasons to believe she did.

What will trouble us from these days we are witnessing? There are so many brutal injustices, and rage is evident most everywhere.  Each one of us must wrestle with what it is we are to do as Children of the Light so we reflect that which is right, just, and fair.

Pastor Martin Niemöller was not only an eyewitness to the evil of Hitler, but in the end he was also a victim.  I remind us of his words as both a reflection and warning.  May we plot our personal and national course wisely.  I wonder, could this excerpt today be recited, “First they came for the Muslims”….

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me–
and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Names of Coptic Christians Slain in Libya