While we slept, people lay trapped in pain and without relief in freezing cold in southern Turkey and Northern Syria. While they were suffered I was dancing to a band in Brighton and talking with some refugees from Iraq after as I walked back to the station

The grim immediacy of that conversation was that it was a little cold round  Napier House and I moaned to myself about an unheated carriage as if I had a third world problem.  Waking to the news that the death toll has mounted (and will continue to mount) makes me question me celebrating Hamish Hawk and all things Scottish last night.

My friend, whose ticket I used last night is in his mid seventies and is himself enduring the misery of confinement after a nasty illness, I am sure he too prays in his heart for relief in Aleppo and Maras and Hatay. For those who have suffered in the Syrian War and who have yet to have relief from that , enduring this second misery makes Job’s torment light.

And yet we can sleep and wake and work – maybe making a donation – maybe saying a prayer but powerless to relieve the suffering of the night that has just been , for so many in such distress.

And there is deep suffering elsewhere in that corner of the world, as my colleague says “let us pray for peace in the East” for there seems little to be had.

For all who live in the UK and whose relatives are in the areas affected by the earthquake, for all displaced by the war to the north or by persecution or economic necessity, may our thoughts and time in writing and reading these words, be some comfort.

And may we be thankful that the worst we may endure is but nothing to the suffering of those we will never know and so easily ignore.