Mad World

@marshallramsey If the world isn’t going mad, it’s getting close.

I tweeted that at 4:30 a.m. when I saw the breaking news from Aurora, Colorado.  A gunman walked into a crowded midnight screening of new Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, tossed smoke grenades and opened fire.  Fourteen innocent people died, 50 were wounded (many critically).  Children are included in the body count.  I recoiled in horror as one witness describe a policeman carry out what seemed to be a dead child.

I then prayed for the world.  A world that seems to be coming apart at the seams. Drought. Economic bad news. Wars. I walked into my sons’ rooms and looked at them sleeping peacefully. What kind of screwed-up world are they growing up in?

As I walked back out toward the front door to go for my run, I looked up at the bookshelf at the pictures of my grandparents.  And then I thought, “They probably had the same exact thought as they watched my parents sleeping.”  The Great Depression had wrecked this country.  Drought had created the Dust Bowl. Hitler was marching across Europe. The Japanese were savaging China.  My grandparents had to wonder what kind of screwed-up world their kids were being raised in, too.

I realized the world isn’t going any more mad now than it was then.  Or any other time in history. In fact, I’ll dare say that the world isn’t going mad at all. The world is just the world. It’s just full of people going mad.  And it’s up to the good people out there to take up the slack and try to make it a better place.

I’ll pray for the victims last night senseless shootings. And I’m thankful a suspect is in custody.  I’ll struggle to create a good world for my sons to grow up in so they can raise kids of their own in a world that seems like it has gone completely mad.