JOPLIN TORNADO

Our family is safe, and has not yet been affected by the many tornadoes striking Missouri this month. However, our prayers and thoughts are with those who have been overcome by this sudden tragedy. I thought this blog-post from Stan Wiedeman at Truth Seeker Blog offered an insightful analysis of the situation, and an appropriate response. I've copied a small section of his conclusion here:

Dorothy Sayers poignantly writes, “For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is – limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death – He had the honesty and courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work, and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.” (Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World, 1969, p 14)

God knows our suffering because he experienced it as a man. This does not answer all the questions, but it answers the important ones. God is there, and he loves us, and he is with us, and he will help us – blessed be the name of the Lord.