Pity For One's Own Sick

Christian Charity and Joy Amidst Suffering

We came across this quotation recently:

It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning.  I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help.  (This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know.)

A great many people do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious.  I don't think it is.  We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others; but even while we are doing it, I think we're meant to enjoy our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, your jokes, and the birds' song and the frosty sunrise.

From The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 2.