They Eat Up My People

Excerpts from a meditation on Psalm 14 that I came across today on that most emminent of blogs, The Anchoress.

They eat up my people, as though they were eating bread.

How terribly we use and use-up each other, every day -- thoughtlessly -- whether we intend to or not.

How often we sin by simply, brusquely trodding over the humanity of the stranger, or the person we love, because we are so intent on whatever has captured our mind of a moment. We “eat each other up, like bread” which we consume carelessly and voraciously. We “throw each other away,” and not only in those big ways - abortion, euthanasia, or in “shutting away” the sick or inconvenient, but in the small ways, too. We ignore each other. We push aside. We pounce. We pressure. We scold. We think of other people as things, or as means to an end. We render each other meaningless, into ghosts and shadows, and we do it all day long.

I do it. All day long.