Do I really care?

With the recent destructive earthquake in Haiti a couple of weeks ago, I have been wondering if I really care or if I care enough. Hundreds of thousands of people are dead, thousands of children orphaned and possibly as many as a million left homeless! My mind can't even comprehend those sort of numbers! Healthcare, food and drinking water are all scarce. I lay in bed a few nights ago wondering if I could cope without drinking water. The thought of not having clean water to drink actually leaves me feeling quite anxious! I keep thinking I should care, I should, I should, I should and I do to a certain extent but not nearly enough.

The only movie I ever recall crying in was Hotel Rwanda which was based on a true story of the Rwandan Genocide (as many as a million people were killed when the Hutu tribe turned against the Tutsis) when a local hotel manager used his hotel as a safe place for some of the Tutsi people to stay. One part of that movie has always stayed with me... a foreign reporter (English I think) and cameraman were talking to the hotel manager about what was happening in his country. The hotel manager was really pleased and grateful that the rest of the world would hear about what is happening to them. The reporter sadly responded that people watching their story would probably look up from their dinner say "oh how sad" and continue eating as if nothing of significance was happening.

That has often haunted me because it is exactly what I do when I'm watching the news. I think we become so used to seeing one disaster after another that we just get numbed to really feeling much at all. I think probably even more than that it shows the depth of my own selfishness and 'the world revolves around me' mindset. Unless something directly involves us in some way there just seems to be this indepth belief that says 'it's got nothing to do with me' and just carrying on living as normal even though there has millions of lives forever affected by these tragedies.

I'm a person who is genuinely happy and enjoys life (most of the time!), but I've been thinking more and more lately that it isn't really about being 'happy'. As a Christian I've often had this misunderstanding that in order for others to want to know the Lord we need to be happy- I do think we should have the "Joy of the Lord" in our hearts, but I think that our witness is the greatest when we are broken. When we are hurting and broken it is often when God does his greatest work in us and it's through these times we have a greater ability to speak into other people's lives. One hymn says it like this:

Is the midnight closing round you?
Are the shadows dark and long?
Ask him to come close beside you,
And He'll give you a new, sweet song.
He'll give it and sing it with you;
And when weakness lets it down,
He'll take up the broken cadence,
and blend it with his own.

And many a rapturous minstrel
Among those sons of night,
Will say of his sweetest music
"I learned it in the night"
And many a rolling anthem,
That fills the Father's home,
Sobbed out its first rehearsal,
In the shade of a darkened room.

I know our own small country- even though we are a long way from the rest of the world- has had its tragedies and will no doubt have more tragedies. I will one day be affected- I am not exempt. I hope God will give me a greater burden for those things that go on around me- disasters, people going through personal tragedies etc. I want to be a woman after God's own heart; what breaks His heart should break mine also.