In the blink of an eye...

 

I have been watching the news on YouTube lately.  And watching other videos about crimes.  And sometimes videos about disasters.  Tonight I watched a video on the 2004 Tsunami.  

I was amazed by the devastation I watched... by the way we see events in our time... by the desire to show all the graphic details of tragedy in other people's lives. 

Where I live there is a major move of tectonic plates expected, like the cause of the 2004 Tsunami.  I was trying to imagine what will happen here... to find out what might happen here.  This video had survivor accounts and actual video collected from people who filmed it as it happened.  It was a horrible disaster, killing hundreds of thousands of people of all ages.  There was no warning.  

I think about our lives and how they change in an instant.  

I was in an automobile accident many years ago.  I was rearended by someone going so fast the front of their car, probably their engine area, was folded flat and upward over their windshield.  The car lifted my back end off the ground.  When it disconnected, my van rolled across the center median and somehow landed on its wheels.  I had a son sleeping in the back with all our belongings.    

We survived.  I had small head injuries from the windshield breaking and slicing the top of my scalp without making a gash.  I thought I had survived without injuries, but it opened after I tried to get out of the van.  There is a permanent indentation there.  I feel GOD was with us through this unexpected event.  My son was protected by all the boxes we were carrying and the mattress we had for a bed.

These things happen without warning, without our ability to escape, and we have to live with the results.  The people in the Tsunami video said the same thing.  They survived, but not without scars.  We are thankful to have survived, but we never forget. 

Natural events like earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods happen yearly, somewhere.  Accidents, crimes against us, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, terrorism, and so many more events we don't expect, happen suddenly, without a hint of danger.  Most we can't prepare for.  

A lot of people think GOD causes anything bad that happens.  Natural disasters are often called "Acts of God" because they are out of our hands. 

When GOD acts through nature in the Bible it seems to be in one specific area, like fire coming out of the sky to incinerate the offerings to Baal or the destruction of Sodom or Jericho (leaving just the place where Rahab was).  There is always a purpose to His judgments.  

We don't really understand what lies beneath the surface of our planet, why tectonic plates exist, what makes them shift and create earthquakes and volcanoes.  It could be we have done something to our planet to cause the destruction we endure.  

I have considered that taking out oil and water and gas from the earth is creating empty spaces under the ground, deep down in places we cannot reach.  It alters the way the earth is structured, changes it in ways we don't yet know or understand.  

Perhaps the weight of our cities affects the stability of the earth.  We don't really know.

I am not looking forward to the BIG ONE in the place where I live... wherever or whenever it happens.  I will prepare for it, as best I can.

The graphic I used today is my saying about challenges we face and how they change us.  When I was looking for the perfect photo to go with my words, I came across a Getty photo that looks a lot like this one except the climber is disabled.  He was climbing with artificial limbs.  That really impacted me.  I don't know what caused his injuries, but the fact that he was even attempting to climb a huge mountain with artificial limbs told me he was braver than I could ever be.

He learned how to overcome the tragedy in his life.  

I hope we can all find a way to do the same.