Psychic Numbing Sunday, I mentioned that while we were in worship, 5,000 people would starve to death. Over and over again, as we talk about poverty and hunger, we hear numbers that are so large as to become incomprehensible. Worse, because we feel helpless to do something, we may stop listening and in time, become numb. Robert Jay Lipton, a psychiatrist who taught at Yale, calls the problem "psychic numbing."
In seminary, we did clinical work to equip us to keep 'tender hearts' in the midst of pain. Yet even with the training I still find it difficult to keep my heart open to the suffering of God's people. Every time I see the evening news it seems "too much" - tornadoes, cyclones, earthquakes, droughts and floods. And then, in addition to world-events, within each of our families and within our church family, there are disappointments, pain and death. How do you stay connected? How do you keep your heart open for others? How do you keep from having a heart of stone?
Praying for tender hearts,
Pastor Tim
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