When disaster strikes without warning—when glaciers fail, fires spread, and the vulnerable find themselves most exposed—faith does not require us to understand why. The prophet’s voice in Lamentations speaks not to the absence of God’s care but to its persistence even amid genuine suffering that appears senseless and indiscriminate. Today’s news carries the weight of real grief: children struggling to breathe, families displaced, communities overwhelmed. To hold fast to mercy in such moments is not to dismiss the devastation but to trust that compassion itself—the impulse to rescue, to help, to stay present with those who suffer—bears witness to something that endures beyond the wreckage. Mercy is not the opposite of tragedy; it is the only adequate human response to it.