Why is it, that when we hear a story about one person dying in tragic circumstances, it is really easy to feel the pain and empathise with the family and friends of the deceased, yet when a huge tragedy like Christchurch NZ happens and over one hundred people die, we think “Oh how terrible” but also feel pretty numb.  The day of the earthquake, I posted this on Pink Sky:

Pink Sky Offer love and prayers to everyone in New Zealand today. When one person dies in tragic circumstances it is easy to feel the pain. When many die, we must not be so overwhelmed that we forget each individual. Each has a story, a family, friends and dreams. God bless all who are suffering today. We stand by you.

And yet I am still troubled, by my apparent ambivalence to their circumstances.  The fact is, we do not have the capacity to feel (truly) as God feels.  We have to ‘cope’ and ‘get by’ and ‘move on’.  We are not directly involved, so we carry on with our own business.

Isn’t it funny though, that we always want goodness to occur in abundance.  When people go on mission, they often choose third world countries, or places where the ‘results’ will be high.  Or perhaps a place where we will come back from with loads of ‘amazing stories’.  What is our measure of ‘amazing’?  Abundance?  Success?

Have we ever considered that what we might consider to be a failure might actually be the start of something amazing?  Just because something didn’t go according to OUR plan, doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened according to God’s plan.  The more I look at Jesus, the more I realise that He focussed an awful lot on individuals.  Meeting people one at a time.

When Jesus called his disciples, he called each one by name, to follow him. He did not address a crowd of people and tell them to follow him.

When Jesus was walking amongst a noisy crowd, he noticed the one woman who touched his cloak.

When everyone was shouting and celebrating, Jesus wanted to go to tea with one tax collector.

When Jesus met the woman at the well he sat down and talked to her personally.

When Jesus addressed the crowds, he fed them using one boy’s food.

The good shepherd left 99 sheep to go and find one that was lost.

Perhaps we are supposed to feel empathy with the one who is lost to tragic circumstances, rather than try to put a blanket over an entire crowd and grieve for them all at once?  When you start to think of each person with their own story it is a lot easier to feel something for them.  Similarly, when we pray that our family and friends won’t be ‘lost to tragic circumstances’ spiritually, it seems better to pray for them as individuals so that we can really feel what we are praying.

I was astonished recently to discover that the highest percentage of atheists, agnostics and unbelievers is in Sweden!  (Perhaps we should go on mission there rather than Africa or wherever we were thinking of?!)  The fact is that if you went there, you might only see one person become a Christian.  The temptation is to think that it has been a failure, but biblically that is not so.  The Bible so often works in the opposite way to the way that we think.

The principle of individualism works in so many areas.  Not judging a book by its cover (each person is an individual), not basing faith on experience (each situation is individual), not making blanket statements (individual circumstances vary), not formulating ‘proof’ from evidential suggestion (individual circumstances vary) etc.

So I will repeat what I said earlier…

Pink Sky Offer love and prayers to everyone in New Zealand today. When one person dies in tragic circumstances it is easy to feel the pain. When many die, we must not be so overwhelmed that we forget each individual. Each has a story, a family, friends and dreams. God bless all who are suffering today. We stand by you.