September 2, 2019 – Click here to listen
I am in Atlanta due to a mandatory evacuation from my home in Jupiter, Florida. I tried to secure my house and boats as best I could, had shutters installed and made the grueling drive to Atlanta. Now I’m relegated to watching the storm head for my home. This morning the hurricane sits about 60 miles away and we are getting pounded by outer bands coming through as we pray that it will turn North and go out to sea.
My heart goes out to those in the Bahamas. I fish there and the people who live there are friendly. They are very poor, and I can tell you are not prepared for what is happening to them as this is written. I’ve lived through being in two hurricanes Camille and Katrina. It is a frightening experience and devastating. One little 7 year old boy has drowned, and his sister is missing, and it brings cold hard reality to this tragedy to envision the grief surrounding this family as they continue to fight for their lives.
I’ve often wondered why God allows these occasional tragedies to occur. This morning I read something famed intellectual and former atheist C.S. Lewis wrote and it made some sense, at least to me:
The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bath or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
These words could never help those poor suffering souls in the Bahamas at this very moment, but perhaps in the ensuing days many will turn to God in their despair and find solace in knowing that one day when Christ takes them home with Him, it will be perpetual happiness and security for all. Until then we will just have to hunker down and pray – HARD – for those in the path of destruction.
Romans 5:3
“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”