When news arrives in waves—of children lost to stampedes and capsized ferries, of disease ravaging communities, of displacement and hunger following natural disaster, of sudden death cutting short a life lived in public view—we face a question older than journalism itself: How do we hold sorrow without despair? The prophet’s words, spoken from the depths of destruction, do not minimize the grief or rush to resolution; they acknowledge both the reality of loss and the stubborn persistence of mercy. On such a day, we might simply sit with the truth that suffering is real and widespread, that it touches the known and the unknown alike, and that the proper human response begins not with answers but with bearing witness to the vulnerability we all share.