Feeling loss personally

Just found out today that the original meaning of Boxing Day was a day where people left boxes of plenty on their doorstep for the needy to take. Seems like a timely reminder in the wake of the Boxing Day earthquake horror. Wonder if there are any emergency funds to contribute to.

Post party, I discovered my mobile was missing. Misspent the whole of today searching for it to no avail. I was kind of moping the whole day for the loss of my handphone and its 200 phone numbers and precious saved SMSs. Felt ashamed that I felt the loss of a stupid hunk of plastic more acutely than the immense loss of life and property caused by the tsunamis.

On my way to get a new SIM card from Parkway Parade, I watched a CNA special edition on the crisis and screen after screen was filled with sad images of homes washed away...mothers screaming over the bodies of drowned childre...countless bodies lying side by side in a mockery of peaceful sleep...and tourists sobbing as they helped each other stand up. Was saddened and found myself posing that ancient plea to God to somehow let there be a reason for all this.

I wanted to feel for them as viscerally as I felt for my stupid handphone but I couldn't. It was like being cursed. Damnit, that's what sin is...pure self-centredness to the core. Selfish beast that I am---while I understood in my head the immense degree of loss in the crisis, my shameless heart felt more attached to my teeny weeny degree of loss. Feelings are such fickle things...so hard to trust them to come at the right moment!

When I watched 9-11 unfold on my tv screen I felt such horror and sadness strike me. I remember being paralysed and crying, watching the planes fly again and again into the twin towers. I remember SMSing anyone in my phone book about it. I wonder why I felt so strongly for 9-11 but not this which is so much closer to home. Perhaps it was because 9-11 appeared to be about the foolish evilness of man unto man, while this earthquake catastrophe seems to be about the will of God? Why He lets tragedies happen is still something I can never truly truly comprehend with equal fervour in my head and in my heart. I understand, accept and can rationalise the answers to evil and suffering but mostly I just want Him to set it right once and for all.

I wish the 2nd Coming would come soon....there is so much to be set right in this world, so many questions that beg for an answer and so many tears to wipe away. The justification of every loss, the cure to the folly of our hearts...what a necessary and Good day that will be.