April 20, 2013 (Saturday)
“So where are we safe from disaster? No place, really. This is nothing new. Life has always had its tragedies natural and man-made” – Dale Pogue
What a week this has been. If you have been reading my recent blogs, you know that I selected historical events in April as the subject of blogs through April 30. Many of these events are about disasters. This past week saw the anniversaries of the sinking of the Titanic, the explosions in Texas City, the earthquake and fires in San Francisco, the bombing in Oklahoma City, and who knows how many other public or personal tragedies were remembered or experienced by people this past week. Now we can add to that list the Boston Marathon bombings, and the West, Texas fire and explosion that registered as an earthquake on seismic recorders.
In one of my blogs this week I said something like “Heaven is a place of perfect peace and joy, but earth is a different kind of place.” There’s a lot of suffering, death and sorrow on earth.
It’s been a long time since I heard the expression, “vale of tears,” to describe earth, but it still fits, doesn’t it?
The disasters and tragedies of history serve to remind us that the time in which we are living, although characterized by something new–namely, acts of terrorism–are much like days in 1906, 1912, 1947, and 1995. Didn’t Job say, “Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble?”
This is life, dear friends, and it is indeed full of trouble. But we must remember that it provides days of happiness, joy, pleasure, contentment, peace and all the other good things. Let us not become cynical, bitter and dismayed.
The Cross proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that God loves us. The pain and suffering of Jesus did not stop him from loving us. We must allow nothing to stop us from loving Him. “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).