Helpless

Helpless

Coming out of a neighborhood restaurant, I saw something odd lying on the one-hundred-plus-degree sidewalk. As I veered away to keep from stepping on the thing, I looked more closely—at a naked, pink, dying baby bird. There was no broken shell nearby, but the bird was not old or fully formed enough to survive without the egg’s protection. This hardly-a-bird was helpless to fly, barely breathing, and dying on the blistering sidewalk.

I cried all the way to my car.

Helpless is hard to see. When the helplessness is not fixable, it’s even worse. But this world we live in is fallen and flawed—on its way to redemption by a beautiful King, yes, but in the meantime harsh. Unforgiving. Inhospitable. Unfair. Relationships decay from the inside out. Bodies fail. Leaders lie. Promises are broken, and the evil prosper. And baby birds fall from safety and die.

I hate the helplessness I feel at times, and I know others feel it as well. I wish I could make more things right. But I can’t. I can’t eradicate injustice or cure disease or eliminate hunger. I would have an almost impossible time falling asleep at night if not for this: my God is merciful. He sees, really sees, the helpless—just like I saw that bird. And he has every resource at his disposal to put wrong things right. Sometimes he works miracles. Sometimes he works through us. And sometimes he works behind the scenes, slowly, in ways we do not see. But his mercies are everlasting. They survive every sorrow.

So when hardness of the world breaks my heart, I can do three things: I can stop and see the tragic thing, give it my attention, and not look away. I can ask God, “What would you have me to do?” and then do it. And I can thank him for embodying mercy in the form of a bleeding Son, by whose stripes you and I and a hurting world may be healed. Praise him. His mercy endures forever.

The LORD is king forever and ever; the nations perish from his land. O LORD, you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.

Psalm 10:16-18, ESV