In watching and reading about  the ordeals in Ferguson, Missouri, New York and elsewhere, it is good for us, as people of faith, to remind ourselves that God knows all of it.

He knows the hearts and the actions of the original actors. His own “eyewitness account” not only includes what truly happened, but the thoughts, fears and desires — good and bad — of the men involved. The rest of us can look at their histories, hear their supporters and detractors, and we can make a hopefully-intelligent guess at their motivation. But it will be a guess on our part. God alone knows the entire truth.

God also understands the reasons for every single person’s reactions and exactly what each one did and what each refrained from doing. And the reasons why.

That applies across the board across the country. Those who desire only peaceful protests are known to Him. But God also can point to those who used the tragedy as an excuse to harm others. He knows which people have been out to benefit themselves, which ones lied deliberately about what they saw, and which simply were mistaken in their honest efforts to be accurate.

Mistakes can happen. For example, many years ago I was walking along and noticed my car going by. The shock of seeing my car going down the road without me in it caused me to momentarily forget that I had loaned it to a friend. The person I thought I saw driving it did not remotely resemble the person who was. Since then, I do not trust eyewitness accounts from anyone who has a vested interest in the incident they witnessed.

These tragedies now include people who have lost property and whose businesses were otherwise adversely affected. I hope they discover in a tangible way that God loves them and will be with them. He is familiar with such things. Bad things have happened to many, many people who did not ask for trouble and did not hate anyone, but who have been harmed throughout the centuries by the violence of others.

I hope today’s victims can find comfort in another truth that our faith, church and Savior teaches us: God is just. He is not “out to get” anyone — but He is fair. Whatever purification God gives  on earth or in purgatory will be appropriate, and all victims will be satisfied with what He does.

Those who seek only to destroy or to benefit from others’ sufferings will have to answer to God. His dealings with everyone will all be impartial, and in right proportion according to His will.

His justice should bring us reassurance even in the midst of troubling times. And hopefully such knowledge will motivate us to examine our own lives and efforts. Since God seeks to bring good out of evil, we should be alert for lessons that He would like to teach us and others as these cases, protests and debates go on.

God cares about the smaller things and actions of life as well as the big, media-covered ones. Always we can ask ourselves if our own motivations are good and holy as we maneuver our way through work, family, friendships and the world in general. We can remind ourselves not to jump to conclusions. We might even try to imagine what good intentions could possibly be behind the things people do — even if to us their actions seem like personal attacks.

I saw a clear example of someone’s jump to a mistaken conclusion earlier this year. I was in a class where the teacher randomly put our name plates on desks around the room for an activity, and one young woman’s name happened to end up in the back row. The girl saw it and stormed out of class. None of us knew why. Our teacher followed up with a phone call, and the girl told her she was hard of hearing and needed to sit up front. It was the first time our teacher (or any of us) had heard of her need.

We, too, should guard against such quick reactions. It’s too easy to give in to the temptation to act only on our view of life. Far better to try to see situations from more than one angle.

Like the people of Ferguson, New York and here at home, we’ll have to answer to God for any self-centered, trigger-quick decisions, particularly if there is the potential for harm to others.

Let’s pray for the people caught up in unhappiness and tragedy. And let’s strive to live in ways that will please God and hopefully provide some balance to all the sadness in the world.