There's nothing like six weeks of relentless suffering

to make one think differently and a little more deeply about the atonement and resurrection. After enduring my own private little hell which has left me skinny and shaken in body, mind and spirit I find it difficult to contemplate other suffering in the world. One of the things that have occupied my mind lately is Africa. The reports from Darfur and Sudan make me physically ill. The stories of rape and murder, starvation and deprivation. The mothers and fathers that were forced to watch as the janjaweed threw their little children into boiling water. Over 200,000 dead in that area from that conflict. There is the Middle East. How is such hatred and rage possible? What evil and secret combinations are underfoot when the world decides it needs to interfere in the oil rich nation of Iraq but leaves the blood and genocide of Darfur alone? What of my own country, America, where teenagers are so desperate to feel something real that they create death and violence to make their lives feel important? If only every person on the planet knew how important their lives are to God. If only they knew each and every one of them is so important that Jesus Christ took upon himself all this suffering so that they need not suffer if they turn to him. All of the ghastly suffering humans have inflicted on each other through the years atoned for. Jesus said, "It is finished." and on the third day he took up his own body and arose from the dead. The darkness and hell on this earth, created by sin and death, overcome. I want to say with Enos, "Lord, how is it done?"