The winds of change

Disaster. This is how I can sum up the past few days. It has come in varying forms, too. From the visual to the emotional. What I see in my community is mirroring an entirely different set of circumstances that nearly cracks my heart wide open and raw. All of it incomprehensible. All of it coming from our Father.

Tornados hit my medium-sized southern town Sunday night. The devastation is incredible. It began less than a mile from our house and continued on a northeasterly pattern, destroying the neighborhoods surrounding our church. A whole house...completely gone, only a few boards remaining on the ground. Trees down everywhere, buses strewn about like matchbox cars, an oriental rug slung into a tree, a bathtub thrown outside of a house while a picture in the next room remains on the wall untouched, a single fence board impaled the side of a house, whole roofs completely torn off. The raw power is hard to comprehend. We were spared. We are grateful.

Another set of circumstances has me on my knees in prayer. Like those in our town who have had disintegration thrown in their faces, a few in my circle are facing an emotional turmoil of their own. A symbolic tornado has swept them up, tossed them around and destroyed any stability and security they had. Unfortunately for them this is not a clear case of force majeure; someone can be blamed. More times than I can count this has been their journey and there is nothing about it that is fair. This was never what was supposed to happen. I am scared for them. I am worried for them. There is nothing I can do. This is God's journey for them.

How do you reconcile these "acts of God?" I know that it turns many away from Him as they see Him as cruel, harsh, and unloving. Many like to subdue the emotions by saying, "He allows it" stopping short at saying, "He causes it." But when you understand the sovereignty of God, that everything must pass through his fingers before it arrives on earth, then you understand it is only from Him.

I can't use this small post to try to tackle this topic. It is too great and vast, potentially argumentative and explosive. Some things are just believed out of faith. God says we will not understand His ways because they are not our ways. And though we can't see it now, I know that all things work together for His good. In the end, He will be glorified.  I have to believe that. I must.