I can still smell what remains of the World Trade Center. I can feel the grains of dust on my tongue, in my nose, and tickling my throat even though I have long since washed the particles away. The charred remains of 6,000 people plus the ruins still tower five or six stories high in places. We call this disaster.
Given the heartache and loss I feel for those who perished in the towers, I agree that it is a tragedy that forever changed the lives of the people who witnessed, lived through the immediate days that followed, and still struggle to carry on. From a human perspective, it is a disaster that defies our comprehension and understanding. I wonder; are there other disasters that we are blissfully ignorant of that will impact us in even more permanent ways?
I ask this question with two struggling thoughts.
The “old” belief suggested the Ultimate Divine Being held each of us in the hands of fate. Based on a wide range of formulas and conditions, our time came to an end when the clock of our lives expired. A “new” belief challenges this; suggesting that we are all competing in a cycle of lives that come with an opportunity to each to approach and eventually become part of the Divine itself. The tragedy of the towers was a human one, but merely yet one more step in the various cycles of lives.
I disagree with both thoughts. What if God cared so much that he provided a mystifyingly simple way out of the morass we struggle with and the tragedies that touch each of our lives? I know this God and everything in my experience validates that this is in fact true! We may not have the good life as defined by money, processions, and titles; we can have peace, a sense of belonging, and the opportunity to walk as a friend and child of God forever.
It is not always perspectives; sometimes it is choice.
“Disaster entraps sinners, but God-loyal people get a good life.” (Proverbs 13.21)
