God can bring good out of everything, even out of the most evil actions, heart-wrenching tragedies and awful calamities. Who would have imagined that the courage and conviction of a young girl who was stabbed to death while resisting being raped would inspire so many people across the globe and eventually lead to her canonization? Who would have foreseen that the jealous act of selling Joseph into slavery and his later imprisonment in Egypt would lead to so many people, including his own family, being fed during the time of famine? Who would have thought to work for the salvation of the world by forming a team from a mishmash of fishermen, tax collectors, revolutionaries and others and entrusting to them a global enterprise? Yet look what God has done through these very human people because they tried to be faithful, tried to do what they knew to be right and tried to answer God's call to them.

These stories would not be told and retold if the people in them had responded differently, if they had said "no" to God's call. The scriptures repeatedly display God working in peoples' lives. God is always with us. God has called us. When confronted by evil, tragedy or calamity do we respond out of our base instincts or, responding to God's grace active in us and in the situation, do we rise above them and try to forgive, try to see what God sees and try to shine some light in the darkness?