A time to grieve...

Human issues are God issues...
or at least they should be.
When God sees the way we as humans(His children) treat each other, He must certainly grieve and experience deep pain in seeing these atrocities we create on His earth to each other. To me the absence of evil is the prescence of love, and this prescence of love can seem to only come fully exercised through God, meaning that where true love exists, so too must God. And that where true evil exists, God is absent or uninvolved. I believe God can have wrath and anger as much a part of His nature as love, however this is not to be confused with evil. This evil then comes from His creation, human beings. Being that we have free choice and ability to follow a right path or pursue evil through our own selfishness, many of us have chosen evil and brought it forth in many forms in the world. By choosing to act for human rights, I believe one is choosing to act for the rights of our God as well.

When over half of the Tibetan population is terrorized, forced to flee their homes and culture, and committed mass genocide against...God grieves.
When hundreds of thousands of underage girls are committed to the slave-sex trade, billions of dollars are made on the industry, and some governments even prosper from this evil...God grieves.
When life after life is lost in the so-called "holy war" fighting over land and power...God grieves.

These things are out of God's nature. They are the absence of love and the prescence of evil. I believe it is our goal, those of us who understand this love, to not only be proactive and helfpful in the fight of such evils, but also to share in this grief and sadness that God experiences from all this as well. It should pain us deeply to see how we as humans have failed to love each other in so many areas, and as a result unleashed evil and repercussions of our own selfishness. God must weep as He sees how we have wreaked havoc on our own home.

I have always wondered why people tag and vandalize their own communities. It never appealed to me to carve my name in the bus I have to ride to school in, or tear the door off of the toilet which I may someday have to use, or graffiti the walls of the neighborhood I have to live in. I'm sure God must share in this grievious bewilderment at what we as humans do to each other and our own surroundings as well. We seem to advance from one evil to the next, all the while ignorant of our weeping Maker who sees us doing it all wrong.

In the book of Jeremiah, the prophet Jeremiah shares in God's grief over the status of the nation of Judah, which once was a Godly nation where brothers loved each other, but now was ridden with evil and wrongdoing. In verse 21 of the 8th chapter of Jeremiah, the prophet utters these words which reverberated so loud in my heart while in this Tibetan-exiled land of Dharamasala, "Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me." It is not simply enough for us to sympathize with God and the people of these terrible situations, but we must empathize with them and share in their pain just as Jeremiah does in his situation. Later on in this chapter of Jeremiah, God speaks up and shares in Jeremiah's grief over the lack of compassion and love for God in his own nation.

It is sad to see how far our own sin and evil can take us, and it is always so far away from truth and love. I must not only understand these peoples pain, but share in their and God's grief over the absence of love. I must learn to grieve every time I hear of the slave-sex trade, homelessness, war, religious persecution, and any other human issue I come across on a daily basis. The hope is that this grieving and empathizing will lead to proactiveness, a prayerful heart, and a desire to not allow the presence of evil or the absence of love exist in or around me. There is so much we can do one thing at a time to start fixing the messes that we have created in our own world, we are often the cause of our own disease.
We must share in the grieving process, and start with prayer.
Jeremiah 9:1- Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!