When the news carries stories of plague moving through already-fragile communities, of children screened for depression born of institutional fear, of deportations that traverse continents in error, and of safeguards dismantled in the name of policy, we might ask what it means that closeness to God is promised not to the powerful but to the broken-hearted. The psalmist does not promise that suffering will end quickly or that systems will suddenly align toward justice; he promises presence—not deliverance from the breaking, but companionship within it. On days when mercy seems scarce and the vulnerable seem forgotten, this verse invites us to consider where God’s nearness might be found: not in vindication of any side, but in the company of those whose spirits have been crushed by the weight of the world.