Hurricanes and God

"Unthinkable Devastation" reads the headline on CNN.com as I check on the latest update on Hurricane Sandy.  Other sub-headlines:

7.5 million without electricity

New York's worst storm ever

New York subways flooded

Many still trapped

We can be grateful in our modern times that at least we knew it was coming and could prepare somewhat for it.  But we are never REALLY prepared to see the kind of destruction mother nature can unleash.  And even in the midst of the best precautions, people can still get hurt or die.  

Our world is a dangerous place to live.

I often wonder when a terrible natural disaster takes place where God is in all of it.  I can tick off a few in recent memory:  the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 was a heartbreaker - over 250,000 people died;  Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the earthquake/tsunami off the coast of Japan in 2011.

I ran across an interesting book a few years ago that tries to make some sense of it all.  It's called Creation Untamed, the Bible, God and Natural Disasters by Terence E. Fretheim.

His premise is stated like this:  "God created the world good, not perfect.  For most people, perfect means something like "without fault, defect, or inadequacy, or in no need of improvement or development to be what it truly is."  The word 'good' however is different in its basic sense and needs closer attention."

He starts with the basic creation text from Genesis.  "Several clues in the text demonstrate that 'perfect' is not the appropriate way to assess the creational situation.  For one if the creation were perfect, how could anything go wrong, such as is reported in the chapters that follow?"

He also talks about the mess of creativity.  "Mess is the precondition of creativity.  Risks abound in every creative enterprise; indeed, risk is essential to the meaning of creativity.  Out of the mess, love and beauty and peace often slowly emerge.  To be a creator entails an almost infinite tolerance of messiness, of inefficiency.   The moment that tidiness and strict orderliness become the rule of the day, creativity is inhibited and the appearance of the genuinely new slows way down.  Natural disasters come into view!"

"God as it were does not paint by numbers.  God gives to creation the continuing capacity not only to be itself, to become what it was created to be, but also to develop into something more."

I think all of the above is food for thought.  Think of the beauty of Crater Lake in Oregon that was created because of volcanic activity thousands of years ago.  Or the crushing ice during the ice ages that carved out canyons of great beauty.

However, none of this is consoling if your house has just been destroyed by a hurricane.  But what I see happening here in the Midwest during this time are trucks leaving Kansas City stocked with food items, water and other essentials heading east to help those in need.  And this is happening all over.  If nothing else, disasters like this certainly remind us how much we humans need each other.  And perhaps for a little while, all our little petty problems get put into perspective.  

Our prayers go out to all in harm's way!