The bombing that took place yesterday during the Boston Marathon has of course dominated the news these past two days. This morning we were told that there was another death and a dozen or so new injuries. I listened to a fascinating interview with a young doctor who was on duty at one of the large Boston hospitals. Emergency rooms all over town were flooded. This doctor described the scene at the hospital: severed limbs, some multiple; severe lacerations caused by shrapnel and glass; blood everywhere; heat and smoke inhalation that can be deadly. He described people searching for hours for their loved ones. He said it is one thing to deal with accident victims in a hospital, but it is quite another thing emotionally when the injured and maimed and dead became so by an intentional act. At one point he heard a nurse tearfully cry out : “Who would do such a thing!?” A question that will haunt us for weeks and perhaps years to come.
There have been thousands of deaths and injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan, but those casualties seem so distant, detached from our every day life…but those injuries and deaths are no less gruesome. The bombing in Boston brings the reality of violence in our world close to home, and for me it raises the question yet again, that if God is a loving God, where is God in this world of violence that has plagued humanity since time immemorial?
The young doctor put it in perspective for me. I say young because he was young enough to remember Mr. Rogers of Children’s television fame. You know: “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood” Mr. Rogers. The doctor remembered a story/teaching delivered on one of his shows. Mr. Rogers told his audience that his mother taught him when he was young that whenever there was a frightful tragedy that appeared in the news, she always told him to look closely for the acts of kindness associated with it. This doctor took that to heart. He observed perfect strangers shedding clothing to make tourniquets to stop wounds from bleeding. People entered the risky ground zero area to help the wounded to safety. Medical professionals held back tears and with courage performed what they had been trained to do; one of the runners had two small children with him, trying to help them find their parents who were in the race. I’m sure there were countless other acts of kindness that went unnoticed; but observing such acts, this young doctor said gave him hope even amid such gore. God bless Fred Rogers, that kind and gentle soul; may he rest in peace, and God bless the young doctor who recognized Mr. Roger’s words as the profound wisdom they were.
And of course the answer to the age old question of where is the God of love in all this, all over the world… is that our God inhabits our hearts and hands to heal, to comfort and succor, to act kindly in courage for the world God loves, the presence of evil and violence notwithstanding. There is nothing passive about Incarnation. God is present, en-fleshed in every act of kindness and compassion…and that’s a real enough God for me.
