We read today’s readings—and WHAM! We are the complacent ones in Zion, stretched comfortably on our couches. We are the ones who pass by the street people, walking a little faster, looking straight ahead lest we risk seeing them as people—people like ourselves.

Call it compassion fatigue. It is hardening people’s hearts—endless videos of refugees crowded into sinking boats, risking their lives to get to somewhere they won’t be killed. The body of a dead child lies on the shore. Tens of thousands in refugee camps hope desperately for a place to go to build a new life. How can we even imagine life in a country like Syria, where an unjust government unleashes lethal chemical weapons on civilians—women, children and the aged. How are we supposed to respond to this scale of insanity?

An arsonist starts a fire on a dry mountain and thousands of homes disappear into the flames, leaving only ashes. Thousand-year floods in Louisiana sweep lives and homes away. Earthquakes turn entire towns to rubble. It’s all too much to take in.

Choose music today that challenges us to see clearly what’s going on and do something about it. It’s not like there isn’t a wealth of good songs, classic and contemporary: Jesse Manibusan’s “Open My Eyes” (OCP), Timothy R. Smith’s “Give Me Ears to Listen” (OCP), my “In God’s Time” (WLP), John Foley’s classic “The Cry of the Poor” (OCP), “Lord, Whose Love in Humble Service” (BEACH SPRING)—what songs resonate with and inspire your community? Might something new jolt them out of their same-old, same-old?