I know God is sovereign and that He loves us. I don't doubt this. But sometimes I wonder why we have to be so unsovereign, so unloving. Why do we have to live in a world filled with billions of people as entirely lost as we are?

Today's been a tough day. I love where I am, and I love the people I'm surrounded by. I usually love what I do-well, I love the potential for what is happening around me. My day in day out activities are less then a passion for me. But I cling to the belief that my small, medial tasks must be contributing to the larger picture. I hope that somehow, somewhere, someone is being benefited....even though it definitely doesn't feel like it at all sometimes.

There's a song called "hosanna" that has become my prayer for about a year now. Part of it asks God to "break my heart for what break's yours, everything I am for your kingdom's cause". Lately I've gotten stuck in the daily tasks, the check lists, the mounding emails, and the constant pressure to not mess up. With all this happening around me, I've lost sight of what brought me here in the first place-a broken heart for what breaks God's heart.

It's been over a year since I stepped off the plane and into Uganda, and sometimes I forget what it's like. But when I pause and reflect, when I look through my photos, when I remember their names, their stories, see their eyes, I break all over again. I'm not so much afraid of the breaking-but of the days when I don't.

I have a friend, an artist, who is incredibly talented. He's one of the most human and yet solid men I've met and I hold great respect for him. I used to paint a lot, but I haven't picked up a brush for almost a year, until one day he challenged me. I was talking about how much I loved painting, and he counted me with the question, If I love it so much-why don't I do it?

Since then, I've begun again. Pushing through the fear of failure, the lack of creativity, the frustrations, and the busyness of life to carve out time to think, pray, stop thinking sometimes, and just paint.

It was just a few nights ago, looking through photos of faces of the people I met in Uganda, that I was rebroken. I sat on the floor, alone, gazing into the eyes of a little girl about three years old named Sandy who lives in an IDP camp outside of Kitgum, and was overwhelmed by something that I still cannot put to words. It's not that I think I can save her, and it's not that I have the mind and power and skills to charge in and fix everything in her life and the complex circumstances leading up to it-it was simply that I felt so deeply and truly how much God loves her. God absolutely cherishes this little girl in the desert of Uganda. And not only her-but all the people in the war-torn country in which she lives, and broader-the countries surrounding hers, and the continents, and so broadly, the world.

So why do we suffer? Why are we broken? Why do we feel nothing at all sometimes? And even more so, why after so long of numbness, do we feel so deeply only for that thing you began to trust be ripped away again? What 's the point of it all?

I believe God has a purpose and he disciplines and teaches those who he loves. Praise Him for that...but some days it just hurts so much. Some days it doesn't feel worth it. Some days I'd rather feel nothing at all.

There's an old saying that says, "it's better to have loved and lost, then to never love at all."

I don't know if I believe that.

Maybe some day I will.

Today is not that day.