I can scarcely believe that only a few hours after writing last week’s column, “Tsunami Revisited”, I was looking at reports of the Haiti earthquake. By all accounts this is worse; both were earthquakes but this latest one was not underwater but on land with big cities immediately in its path. Hence the destruction of all infrastructure and with it the means to get help to those in such desperate need. We are seeing every conceivable agony and distress heartbreakingly unalleviated.
Some responses are heartening. A major daily newspaper reported passengers on a cruise liner only 60 miles away at a secluded Haitian beach feeling unable to eat in such luxury whilst thinking of those in the towns, and glad that the profits of the cruise will go to the stricken. A huge international relief effort was mounted in hours. This is humanity responding to the needs of humanity, and really does gladden the heart. The American military has taken overall control to establish crucial infrastructure, but this has brought political squabbles in high places, even at a time like this – this is also humanity! There will be other responses!
At a time like this response is the key issue; not just simply practical response to a particular tragic situation, but an individual, deeper, life-orientating response. Events like this declare loudly in the middle of our sitting rooms that life is always precarious (though in the West we are dangerously cushioned from this truth), that we are incredibly vulnerable, that we are never master of our own fate, that pain, grief and distress are always present or just round the corner. We are forced to question what life is about, where hope and certainty are to be found, and how we are behaving in the light of a day of reckoning. To brush off such questionings with “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die” is the height of arrogance and folly. Christians need to do this as much as anyone.
Certainly Jesus, though always aware of the fact of judgement in this world, insisted that such heart searching was the essential response to such events, and that the only proper outcome was a turning to God, not a cursing of God. (Lk 13:4-5).
I have an alternative thought for this column if you really want a biblical challenge: sit with the news accounts of Haiti in one hand and the Lamentations of Jeremiah in the other, and read one into the other. I wonder where that will lead you?
Bob
Some responses are heartening. A major daily newspaper reported passengers on a cruise liner only 60 miles away at a secluded Haitian beach feeling unable to eat in such luxury whilst thinking of those in the towns, and glad that the profits of the cruise will go to the stricken. A huge international relief effort was mounted in hours. This is humanity responding to the needs of humanity, and really does gladden the heart. The American military has taken overall control to establish crucial infrastructure, but this has brought political squabbles in high places, even at a time like this – this is also humanity! There will be other responses!
At a time like this response is the key issue; not just simply practical response to a particular tragic situation, but an individual, deeper, life-orientating response. Events like this declare loudly in the middle of our sitting rooms that life is always precarious (though in the West we are dangerously cushioned from this truth), that we are incredibly vulnerable, that we are never master of our own fate, that pain, grief and distress are always present or just round the corner. We are forced to question what life is about, where hope and certainty are to be found, and how we are behaving in the light of a day of reckoning. To brush off such questionings with “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die” is the height of arrogance and folly. Christians need to do this as much as anyone.
Certainly Jesus, though always aware of the fact of judgement in this world, insisted that such heart searching was the essential response to such events, and that the only proper outcome was a turning to God, not a cursing of God. (Lk 13:4-5).
I have an alternative thought for this column if you really want a biblical challenge: sit with the news accounts of Haiti in one hand and the Lamentations of Jeremiah in the other, and read one into the other. I wonder where that will lead you?
Bob
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