Darkness and disturbing news cycles

In case you haven't been paying attention, the news has been especially horrible the past couple of weeks. Father of 9 guilty of murdering his entire "family" (read the story, the quotation marks will make sense) ...police apprehend molester who kept a log of over 36,000 names of children he abused over the past 30 years...the situation with the missing girl in Aruba is starting to play out like a David Mamet movie...and this just in, 3 missing New Jersey boys are found dead in the trunk of a car parked next door to their house. Sometimes it's hard to even fathom the sheer scope and intensity of the darkness that surrounds us every day. Even though I have largely been spared in my own life from tragedies like these, the stories still shake me to my core. I often get wrapped around the axle, so to speak, with the question of why God allows things like this to take place. It was in the midst of these thoughts that I read this piece by Betsy Childs. It's become a cliche by now, but there is truth to the notion that you can't see the light without the darkness. If we are to be the light of the world, our light should only be that much brighter living in days in days as dark as these.