I think I had a good day today. I was thinking a lot.  And for some reason, I felt like I got interrupted a lot. It was long. They all feel long. When was the last time someone asked you how your day was and you said “oh so short!” Never.

Monday, back at school. Teaching junior high. Which I have a love-hate relationship with. After hearing the message from this weekend I kinda went to work thinking “wow…everything that is going on in the world, and I teach kids who are doing well enough to get to go to private school and learn Latin? I am wasting my life! I need to sell my life for a cause! Social justice and mercy! I should be out there on the frontlines! Cracking down on child trafficking and drug lords and saving the world for Jesus!”

I am not sure what my next step in that journey is. But it must be something. It is not enough to say I was moved by what I learned. I feel…shaken? Broken? Disgusted? Angry? Disbelief? Slightly helpless.

Thinking about those statistics…girls and some boys ages 10-18, their lives stolen from them. I look out at my students, about 11-14 years old, in all their adolescent bewilderedness and adorableness and I know that I love them and I am blessed to work with them and be a small part of what I hope will be their great lives. What if something happened to one of them? Someone I knew? It wouldn’t be any more of a crime than it happening to a stranger, but it would be awful.

Life is hard. It is hard to understand why i get to live the way I live, and some people have terrible things happen to them. It is hard to see God. But I have to think He is Hope.

My sister posted this is her status today, and it speaks to my heart and struggling with this knowledge:

In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. – john 16 33

and i’ll add this one, because it helps me:

16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2cor4

but it seems….trite? to throw a Bible verse at a worldwide crime against humanity. I want to do something NOW. There must be something more. I guess I will wait to know of something more.