Where America's Day Begins--that's one of the descriptions of Guam. A pretty small--though it is the largest in Micronesia--island in the Pacific. As I write in the morning, here in Virginia, it is already the middle of the night, tonight, there on the other side of the world.
If America's day begins in Guam, then this day started badly.
About 3:00 this morning EDT, a 7.1 earthquake, centered just twenty-five miles off Guam shook the island with enough force to get everyone's attention. Surely such a phenomena, especially where our day begins, has to be a warning--maybe even a punishment. Perhaps God is rattling our new-day to shake us from our complacency. Maybe God is sending a signal to Washington. "You think you are secure from attack? You think you can ignore the cries of the refuges fleeing for their lives? I can shake you from your position of faux-security as easily as I can shake your island on the far horizon."
No doubt an imam somewhere is drawing entirely different applications from the shake-up in the place where America's dawn first creeps over the horizon.
If you didn't read yesterday's STTA, I hope you will. This one is a follow-up.
As the old song goes, "He's got the whole world in His hands." Yet, as my tongue-in-cheek interpretation of natural phenomena indicates, unless God gives us a clear indication of what something means, we are clueless. And--I know I'll raise some antagonism here--folk who claim to heard from God about the why behind the what, haven't. Hurricane Katrina wasn't a judgment on the Gay community, Sandy didn't strike New York in judgment against Mayor Bloomberg, and the fact that one person's house is bigger than another is no particular indication of God's blessing.
When you ask me "Why?" concerning the What. My answer is, "I don't know."
Is there nothing we can learn from natural disasters and wondrous natural beauty?
No, there is a great deal we can learn. Psalm 19 tell us that the sky is the display of God's handiwork. Job saw his smallness as he viewed the greatness of God's creation. Basic characteristics inherent in creation can lead a thinking person to conclusions about the creator.
But when we claim to know specific meaning behind specific happenings in the natural world we are, to quote Job, "declar[ing] that which I [don't] understand, things too wonderful for me, which I [don't] know.” (Job 42:3)
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