Recently, I listened to a sermon by Howard Hendricks.  Hendricks taught for sixty years at Dallas Theological Seminary.  He died in 2013.   In the message, Hendricks described one of his favorite poems, “The Night They Burned Shanghai” by Robert Abrahams.  It tells of a couple driving to play Bridge with some of their friends.  As they are en route they survey what is going on in the world.  The luxury of playing Bridge is juxtaposed with various world tragedies.  The poem ends with these arresting lines:

Tonight Shanghai is burning

And we are dying too

What bomb more surely mortal

Than death inside of you 

For some men die by shrapnel

And some go down in flames

But most men perish inch by inch

In play at little games.