The Lost Connection

No. 51 - 17th September 2017

The news this week has read a bit like the script of a disaster movie. We’ve had floods in India and Bangladesh, earthquakes in Mexico, and hurricanes all across the Caribbean and the East Coast of America. The scale of the disaster was horrendous with its destruction of property and loss of human lives. Even Hollywood might think twice before including all that in a single script. I mean, who would believe a story like that? In insurance terms, these events are categorised as an “Act of God”. By which most people mean that, if things are going well, it’s because I’m successful and managing my life really well. But when everything goes wrong, it’s God’s fault. It’s an act of God.

The world is as it is. Earthquakes and tornadoes are just natural events. That’s how the earth works. An exploding volcano is an absolutely spectacular sight, unless of course you happen to be living underneath it. Then you have a slightly different perspective. The trouble is that the land around a volcano or on a flood plain tends to be very fertile. So, people take the risk and exploit its benefits. At the time of the Boxing Day Tsunami that hit India and Sri Lanka in 2004, there were many stories about how the animals reacted. Long before the waves hit, Elephants screamed and ran for higher ground. Breeding Flamingos abandoned their low-lying nests. And it was reported that with 150,000 people dead, relatively few animal carcases had been found. For instance, in the 500 square mile Yala National Park, sixty visitors were washed away, but apart from two water buffalo, all the other animals and birds had moved to higher ground. How is it, that with all our intelligence and sophisticated equipment, we can’t match the animals in this matter.

The Bible tells us that in the beginning God breathed his Spirit into the man and the woman, and through that produced a unique relationship with them. It was a relationship that allowed for a two-way communication between us and God. This connection meant that a loving God could warn his children when danger was coming their way. But, having shut God out of our lives, that connection was lost, and now we’re even worse off than the animals. We’ve become spiritually deaf and blind towards God. Well, that’s the bad news. The good news is that in Christ, that connection was restored once again and made available to us. Now, that’s an offer I couldn’t resist?