Makes everything else seem so small

As I lay in my bed last night, sweltering and un-asleep, my thoughts bounced back and forth from the mundane to the life-and-death.

“I need a pedicure.”
“It’s so hot.”
“I hope those journalists are released.”
“What if there’s a nuclear war?”
“I can’t forget to buy toothpaste.”
“Cancer is so evil.”
“Who will take care of Wendolyn?”
“Ugh, I hate gnats.”

How can I have the capacity for such a spectrum of considerations?  To swing from orphans and illness to weight loss and shoes?  I mean, when I am made explicitly aware of issues like poverty and starvation and war and death, how can I spare a thought for something as diminutive as the trailer for “New Moon”?  When I think of American women being detained in North Korea, or little Haitians with no one to love them, or a dear friend who is battling a horrific lung cancer, how can I think about vacations and dating and music?

And yet, here I am.  Caught between the temporary and the eternal, the physical and the spiritual – spinning my wheels wondering if I am pursuing the “right” (often selfish) things when I know, deep down, that life is only meaningful if given away.  Carrie Underwood sure got it right: “When you figure out love is all that matters after all, it sure makes everything else seem so small.”

I guess that Jesus said something along those lines, too.

So simple.  So radical.