by Rachael Helsel

Life on Queen Anne Hill is picturesque enough to be the subject of a coffee table book, and I have a comfortable calendar that revolves around a great job, social events, and church functions. After the breaking news of the earthquakes in Haiti and China, I felt as if I had been wearing blinders that kept my focus on myself and away from remembering the cause of those in need.

Our world is beautiful, yet broken. Spoken into existence like a story, we find ourselves in a cosmos of conflict – estimates of 27 million people are enslaved worldwide, young girls are forced into the sex trade in Spokane and Portland, and friends from home are trying to reconcile with cancer and divorce.

Evaluating these plot twists of suffering usually leads to some form of demanding resolution from the Author, and some begin to doubt everything when an answer doesn’t come in an English speaking voice from the clouds.

In a discussion on suffering at SPU, I remember a teacher once challenging my class to devote more time to considering what our reply would be if God turned the question around and asked us what we were doing to resolve the world’s pain. I think that Viktor Frankl agreed with this when he said the following about life and suffering during his imprisonment at Auschwitz, “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.

We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.”

We all have been born into a narrative with the freedom to act well until our final scene, but do we? Donald Miller says that sometimes we allow fear to trick us into living boring stories. Fear and inattention. Are we actively seeking to meet the brokenness of our neighborhood and the world? We are on stage, but we are also the playwrights.