Kayla Mueller’s Vision of God

Kayla Mueller, the American humanitarian captured while working in Syria by ISIS in 2013, was confirmed dead this morning in a statement issued by the White House.

Kayla dedicated her life to helping vulnerable people around the world, and protesting the political and social oppression and dire circumstances of refugees and suffering peoples in places like Kenya, India, Israel, and the Palestinian territories, and Turkey. She then went to Syria because she felt compassion for the plight of the Syrian people, wondering ‘where is the world?’ along with them. She was fearless, tough, skilled, empathic, and had a grounded yet otherworldly sense of what is most important in life. 

She said in a letter to her parents: ‘I will always seek God. Some people find God in church. Some people find God in nature. Some people find God in love; I find God in suffering. I’ve known for some time what my life’s work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering.’ ‘I find God in the suffering eyes reflected in mine. If this is how you are revealed to me, this is how I will forever seek you.'”

May we all learn and be changed by the inspiring life and deep, abiding spirituality and faith in action of Kayla Mueller. She is a woman we can all look up to and aspire to emulate in the ways we are each personally capable and called; she is a vision of the pinnacle of womanhood, the substance, strength and fortitude. Each day when I face my own average fears here in the physical safety and security of my life in New York City, I will think of her and gain perspective and encouragement. Thank you, Kayla, for embodying God in our hurting world. God bless our beautiful heroine.