It's Holy Week.  Holy Week is about suffering, helplessness, and pain.  It's also about joy, pure and holy joy.  Holy Week takes us into the deepest of darknesses, yes, but it also takes us into the most profound of all light.

    Holy Week tells us that the end of the story is that on which we must focus most.  Indeed, pain is part and parcel of our lives.  But only part.  In Jesus' suffering, we see ourselves.  And he us.  But it is in Jesus' resurrection that we ought to see ourselves even more.  It is in that pivotal moment, that epochal moment in which God conquered death that we must look.  For it is in it that we see our future best.

    Consider the Modern Museum of Art's description of the painting to your left:  "The Disaster Paintings eternalize the real-life modern events we are faced with daily in contemporary society yet quickly forget when the next catastrophe occurs."
    

    Maybe, however, we're focusing on the wrong thing.  Jesus' death presents a God who is bigger than disaster, a God who is bigger than the very darkest of pain.  Jesus died, yes, Messiah slain, but God lives.  And Jesus rose.
     And God is God.  Though disaster fills this world, God's power fills it even more.