2:30 AM and the Tsunami sirens begin to sound. “Evacuate, this is not a drill”, it keeps blaring. From a stupor of restful sleep, having drifted off listening to the sounds of the ocean waves through an open window, I try to make sense of what I am hearing. First I think the cops are calling someone to come out with their hands up. No, too much TV still in the brain.
When I realize what is being blared into my skull I realize, something serious is happening. We check the computer and discover the facts of Japan’s earthquake and understand that size of earthquake could really cause what they are warning us of. The first waves aren’t going to hit for 4 hours but we decide to go ahead and get in the car and drive to ‘Higher Ground’. Besides, it is raining, cold and windy. I really don’t want to be reduced to hiking up the mountain at the last opportunity of escape. I have a survival kit in the car so we have food, water and a stove for cooking, so off we go.
It is then it strikes me, how very much we are like what God uses as a metaphor: Sheep. A herd mentality. When we come to the first realistic parking area, it is absolutely jammed pack full of cars. Probably 150-200 cars taking up every available area to park in. I remember that next to this area is another pull off with another parking lot. I literally go 15 feet further down Highway 26 and turn into another parking lot that even has a bathroom!! Not one car in the whole lot. All the sheep are herded together. I back into a spot in the dark at 3:30 in the AM and thank the Lord that He is not allowed us to stray so far that He could not find us. We didn’t make it back to our cabin until noon and it was all for naught, or was it? I wonder of His creation, of what is happening in it, to it and because of it. I realize how important I am to Him, how grateful I am for His goodness and care. And to realize we are perfectly safe no matter what happens.
For us it turned out, but it doesn’t always turn out that way in the human situation, it surely didn’t for hundreds in Japan for whom I mourn.
How can God allow all of this to happen if He is good? The answer has to be: Because He is good. He will redeem all of the human suffering in His time and in His way. Because He is good. If He isn’t good, a Tsunami is the least of my worries.
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