Our Hearts Go Out to Mumbai

When the plane crashed into the Twin Towers, we got a real sense of how connected the world is. My wife received an email that day from a store owner in Germany. She'd bought shoes over the internet and exchanged a few emails.

When the London Metro was bombed, I was at SMB Nation. The television kept showing the Russel Sqare tube station. Six months earlier, we'd stayed at a hotel near there and used that station several times a day.

It's just a tiny thing, but makes us feel connected.

With the horrible bombings in Mumbai, and the senseless deaths of so many civilians, our hearts go out again.

We "know" people who help us with support in India. Many are from Mumbai. They work for Zenith, HP, and others. Between emails and phone calls, we talk to someone in Mumbai every week.

In particular, I feel connected to our friends at Zenith. We actually communicate with some of them on an ongoing basis.

We pray that they and their families are safe.

And it occurs to me . . .

If there's one thing that we can count on to save us from the insanity of terrorism, it's our totally-connected, "flat" world.

We just got back from a Thanksgiving get-together up near Crater Lake, OR. One of the couples there was from Kent, England. They met another couple some years ago on a cruise. The Americans visited England. Now the English were visiting America and investigating our Thanksgiving holiday.

More and more, we find ourselves having true friendships with people in other countries.

While there will always be people who simply refuse to get along with one another, there is also a natural tendency in the human spirit to make friends -- and to band together in times of adversity.

As Christmas approaches, let's take a little time to pray for world peace. I don't know if it's any more possible than it was 50 or 100 years ago. But it just seems that our technology, our communication, and our inter-connectedness ought to be useful for something besides making money!