If you know me at all, Boston in my second favorite city in the world, a very close second to London. Some of my best friends in the world live there. So, yesterday, when I got word of a bombing in the city that holds my heart and has for years, I felt to many things. First of all, I was panicked because I thought one of my friends still worked in Copley. My mind automatically went to a bad place. Second of all, I was pissed. How dare someone attack innocent people on American soil on Patriots day, of all days. Finally, I was bereft. People lost their lives. People lost their limbs.
Taking a few steps back, without seeming insensitive to the city of Boston, yesterday would have been considered a good day in Baghdad. I hear of unspeakable tragedy on a daily basis there. Bombs going off daily, killing staggering numbers of people every year. In Africa, there are groups who steal children from their parents, force them to wield guns and murder their loved ones. Right here in the US, there are hundreds of thousands of people who are enslaved…sex slaves, forced laborers.
I am ashamed of myself. It took the city that I love being attacked for me to snap out of my complacency and remember that the life that I live, while quite stressful much of the time, is really an altered, sheltered reality. I have been numbed into silence while people with whom I rub shoulders on a daily basis, are living in perilous circumstances.
What hurts my heart most is that one of my initial reactions was so violent. My Savior, when he was being flogged and when he was hanging on a cross was not to strike back, but to pray for his enemies. Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.
My prayers go out to the victims of the terror attacks in Boston. My prayers also go up for the people who thoughtfully put together bombs and placed them for maximum carnage. I pray for their salvation, and I pray that God would forgive them, because they know not what they do.
Deneen White 