Act of God?

From the depths the subterranean plates slipped, and it was as if the wrath of God pointed the macabre finger of death in Haiti. The rest of the world stopped in anguished awe while the scenes of destruction took the lives of hundreds of thousands of souls who could not escape the fury of nature. Part of the devastation took place because men who built the collapsed structures from hovel to palace had failed miserably to observe any code whatever. It took a 200 year earthquake to wring the souls of Haiti into the chaotic misery that yet reigns.

The world reacted quickly and efficiently to relieve the pain, succor the dead and dying, bring the miracles of modern medicine and the construction trades to find and repair bodies broken and spirits replenished with hope. We prayed incessantly for the brave people who survived and for their rescuers, and all of us sent money in unbelievable amounts. The better angels of our nature came together in the noble effort to lift up the suffering and to show compassion for those lost and known but to God.

The insurance people and the law profession call such a catastrophe an "act of God" as if He willed such a tragedy upon a helpless people, without purpose as a divine will to take lives. The God with whom I am acquainted must know in His wisdom all the "whys" and "wherefores" and will keep His silence. It was clearly an act of nature with well-known causes and consequences, thrust in due time upon hapless earth people who inhabit the unstable planet.

So are the hurricanes and also the tsunami and the tornadoes and the ice storms and the innumerable other mishaps and travails which we must share as part of our sojourn of living here on this unstable globe.

Acts of God are those of His kindness and loving mercy and all that is good from the Author of life.