It’s a weird time to be an American. I feel like the Tom Hanks character in “Castaway,” sobbing as the unreachable Wilson just floats away.​ Our beautiful country is caught in a rip tide of daily horror. It (the tide) was clearly explained in advance…and a lot of people chose it anyway. Maybe they had no skin in the game…or said another way, no Wilsons.

​Maybe the pain is happening to other people, but not to them. Maybe they can watch “Castaway” and not be touched in the least by that Wilson scene.

But I think most of us ARE touched by other people’s pain, no matter who we voted for. We ached for Zelensky in that Oval Office meeting. We can relate to losing our jobs and having years of research wiped away from our computers overnight. We worry for our friends whose disabled children might lose their wheelchairs.

Such beautiful care for the other is what made our country great in the first place.

I think it’s an important time to guard our hearts against callousness, especially when it’s all around us anyway. Missionary Bob Pierce and others have said it this way. “Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.” May God remove our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26)