Pain and hope

EDITORS NOTE: Graphic content / TOPSHOT - A newborn baby who was found still tied by her umbilical ...
10 February 2023
When devastating tragedies like the earthquake in Turkey and Syria occur, people cling desperately to hope. Hope makes sense precisely when a situation is desperate. This is also the meaning of prayer; as C.S. Lewis says: “Nearly all the things people pray about are unpredictable: the result of a battle or an operation, the losing or getting of a job, the reciprocation of a love. We don’t pray about eclipses”. An eclipse is the opposite of an earthquake in terms of predictability. It’s a great “show” of which everything is already known ahead of time. In this aspect, it well represents the mood of today’s technologically advanced western world, in which everything is “for show” and where there is no room except for what is foreseen, programmed and planned; even travel, a symbol of adventure, is ‘planned’. And of course something always ...

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