Listen.

Is it just me, or does life seem to get only more confusing, the older you get?

I'm sitting here typing in my temporary home (seems that's the norm for me now - haha), occasionally hearing horrific sounds - too graphic to be described. There's a meat rendering plant next door.

I've always been a bit horrified, growing up, by the fact that people will kill animals and then eat them. Animals have always been my friends... just watch me melt when they're around. Why would people want to eat them? Are we, as humans, really that hard-hearted, to eat the creatures that trust us so implicitly, and consume the life that only God can give?

Yet, through all the sounds of death next door, I can hear other sounds of death, if only through my imagination...

You see, just because they aren't being slaughtered in a rendering plant next door, there are others. If you listen carefully, you will hear their cries...

(MARCELLO CASAL JR - Wikimedia commons

They may or may not live in your neighborhood. But God hears their cries, nonetheless.

Do we hear them?

According to UNICEF, about 153 MILLION kids worldwide have lost one or both parents.

Google says there's over 100 million homeless in the world.

Malnourished? about 790 million.

Worst of all - people who don't even know who Jesus is? Over 3 Billion.

(that's like almost half the world, BTW).

Yes, my heart still hurts for the poor creatures next door. But now I feel overwhelmed.

Here I sit. Surrounded by first world environment, bothered by only such inconveniences as first world people are. And they are "over there." "In the mission field."

(where is that, anyway?)

2,000 years ago, Jesus was in Heaven. He looked down at the "Mission field", and said:

"Lo, I come."

Just a thought. Do you hear their cries? You can, if you listen carefully.