Tough Times on Planet Earth

It's been a rough 6 weeks or so to be a human being on the 3rd planet from the sun.

To recap:  1) Civil unrest and even civil war has broken out all across the middle east and North Africa.  Likely thousands have been killed, arrested and tortured as a result (reporting is sketchy due to censorship).  2)  One of the largest earthquakes on record hit Japan with about a thousand killed.  3) A tsunami followed closely on the heels of the earthquake, killing thousands more.  4) After the earthquake, a couple nuclear generation facilities have gone very wrong.  It's unclear at this point how this part will resolve.  5)  Largely missed in all this has been extreme rain and flooding in the North Eastern U.S. 

All this has been in addition to the background drumbeats of disease, human trafficking, bad economic news, etc. 

Here on the West Coast, other than extensive damage at the yacht harbor and up at Crescent City, we've been largely spared so far.  Still, the Loma Prieta quake and the rains of the 80's should remind us that we don't really have a pass or Get out of Jail Free card.  It's just not our turn right now.

The only real point I have in summing all this up is that things are becoming progressively more challenging...exactly as we've been told would be the case.  I think the tsunami in particular is a helpful physical illustration of the issue at hand.  Waves, one following the other, pound and destroy where they haven't before.  The sea runs out of it's boundary. 

To be clear, none of this is lost on God.  In fact, Jesus talked about all this at some length 2000 years ago.

Past the knowing, it can be much harder to integrate this information into who we are.  That is, to really trust that God is good and that we belong to him.

I will say this:  Recent events represent a great invitation to accelerate our relationships with God. 

If you've ever read the bible and thought something like:  "Wow.  Wouldn't it have been great to be one of the people that knew Jesus or saw him ascend into heaven!"  Well, there will be souls for all time that look at us and say, "Wow, they were there when the curtain finally came up.  They were witnesses and participants of the end that was the beginning."

Truly our great challenge is not to merely survive.  Our great challenge is to grow, thrive and share the joy and hope that is in Christ, even when the earth is moved, the sea overflows it's appointed shores, and practical hope seems only a memory.  We are those that are called to deny victory to fear, hate and all greater evil.  We do so by insisting on co-authoring our lives with the God who spoke us into being.