A Prayer Poem (read at risk of being inspired)

A lot has been going on in the world in the last days & weeks. It's a constant stream of sadness, anger, frustration, disappointment - you name it. A Twitter-correspondent recently noted that she found the newspaper she'd bought "thoroughly depressing".
I guess we do live in a world that looks like that.

Religious or not, one can perhaps find some inspiration in this prayer-poem that I stumbled across some time ago. Someone - I know not who - had pinned it onto the office wall, for all to see. Now I'm pinning it here!
What I like about this prayer-poem is that it takes the disappointment and hurt, and transforms it - into a reason to be compassionate. How lovely. I hope it stimulates some helpful reflection for you too.

Sometimes, Lord,
it just seems to be too much:
    too much violence, too much fear;
    too much of demands and problems;
    too much of broken dreams and broken lives;
    too much of war and slums and dying;
    too much of greed and squishy fatness
        and the sounds of people
            devouring each other
                and the earth;
too much of stale routines and quarrels,
    unpaid bills and dead ends;
too much of words lobbed in to explode
    and leaving shredded hearts and lacerated souls;
too much turned-away backs and yellow silence,
    red rage and bitter taste of ashes in my mouth

Sometimes the very air seems scorched 
    by threats and rejection and decay
        until there is nothing
        but to inhale pain
            and exhale confusion.
Too much of darkness, Lord,          
    too much of cruelty
        and selfishness
            and indifference…
Too much, Lord,
    too much,
        too bloody,
            bruising,
                brain-washing much.
 Or is it too little,
    too little of compassion,
    too little of courage,
        of daring,
        of persistence,
        of sacrifice;
    too little of music
        and laughter
            and celebration?
O God,
make of me some nourishment
    for these starved times,
        some food for my brothers and sisters
    who are hungry for gladness and hope,
        that, being bread for them,
    I may also be fed
        And be full.


"Sometimes, Lord, it just seems to be too much" 
- from the book "Guerillas of Grace" by Ted Loder 

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