Archived News Item

The Pain of God

August 9, 2010

Anne Drover RSM (North Sydney) has been reflecting on the suffering in the world and has submitted a reflection for readers.

• This picture – “The Pain of God”, attempts to portray the effect on a Creator – God as “man’s inhumanity to man” increases, and includes not only all living creatures, but our very planet, earth.
• Species extinction accelerates as we plunder earth’s resources, poisoning air and water. Our very existence is in mortal danger.
• Reminders of the horrors of Srebrenica, Rwanda, Sudan, the Congo. Genocide in our time, as the story of Cain and Abel is repeated a thousand-fold. Nor are we Australians immune, faced with a history of massacres by early colonists, and today, injustices heaped one upon another by those claiming to know ‘what is best’ for those they dispossess.

About the symbols

• From the abode of light, jagged and menacing shapes.
• Planet earth and Calvary’s Hill (Golgotha – Hebrew "the place of a skull").
• Streams (tears?) of blood rain from the heavens.
• A suffering world:
  “God so loved the World…” (John 3:6)
  “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do…” (Luke 28:34)

Artwork and text by Anne Drover RSM (North Sydney)