Praise, Prayer, and Passion

We had a meeting of the teachers today at SBV.  We started with a devotional that blossomed into a full hour and a half of prase, prayer, thanksgiving and pleas.  The intensity rose until the passion was palpable. 
In the US we don't like to acknowledge, mush less talk about the presence of evil in the world.  It is much nicer and cleaner to just focus on God's love and our many blessings.  In the US many of us have much to be thankful for and so we can focus on the pleasant aspects of our lives.  As I watched the teachers singing and praying, and their passion rising, I realized they live in the midst of the results of real evil in the world.  They teach the children so affected by the evil in the world.  They live in the communities where the evil of poverty and all its many effects plagues the people like the plagues of locusts, flies, frogs, and bloodshed of Moses' time in Egypt.  Children are kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery, fathers rape daughters, children and parents alike go to bed hungry, promising young men are killed for a cell phone by drug users or pushers.  The effects of lack of water are myriad.  Yet in the midst of their cries to God for help, their faces shine with love for God, for each other, for God's many blessings on them.  I saw tears being shed, hands and arms raised to God as they sang and prayed so passionately, and I was moved to the depths of my being. I think this mush have been a scene familiar to David the psalmist, to Isaiah, to Israel in times of the Babylonian captivity.
I can't answer the "why" questions I have-that we all have.  I do believe God put us into community with and for and by each other to stand next to each other in pain, sorrow, and joy.  As Christ healed and taught, prayed, and blessed, I believe we are meant to take that example and do likewise.  To sit with each other in sorrow, to hold each other tightly in times of dread and fear, and to share our joys and blessings with each other in ways that become sacrificial.  To serve the needs of those in our community with the gifts and talents we have been given.