Although I was traveling over the weekend, I could not help but hear about the tragedy that continues to unfold in France.  My heart sank at the news.  From our vantage point on this finite and confusing earth, though we can ascribe such actions to a combination of hatred and mistaken religious fervor, we still quake before what they suggest about the capacities of the human being.  Are people really this evil?
     Unfortunately, history has made it abundantly clear that the short answer is yes. Given certain conditions, human beings are capable of inflicting the most horrific pain imaginable--and beyond.  Before this certainty, we cringe; yet we should cringe even more if we believe we live in an accidental and therefore meaningless universe.  Although it certainly complicates our efforts to make sense of our reality, religion, particularly one invested in a personal and loving God who made himself known in Jesus Christ, enables us to come to grips with pain in a way that a happenstance cosmos does not.  We may still not understand fully, but we know that in a divinely created and therefore meaningful universe, explanation, now or later, is eventually possible.
     Until this eventuality becomes reality, however (and this is the ultimate frustration of finitude in the grip of eternity), we will not know it completely.  As Paul put it so eloquently (and maddeningly), we live by faith.
     Pray for the people of France, pray for the planet.