Share
RSSGoodness Again
by The Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton
5/22/2005
And God saw everything that he had made, and it was very good.... -- Genesis 1:22
It is hard to remember the goodness of the earth in the midst of a natural disaster -- nature seems enormous, raging, ruthless, an enemy. It seems that whatever goodness there was in nature was a million years ago, and it seems that it will never be good again.
What can restore a person's faith in goodness? What can give someone who has lived through something terrible the courage to stand up amid the wreckage of everything he had and trust that life will again be possible?
Rural Mississippi was struck by tornadoes last month, twelve in one day.. Dozens of small communities were affected, some of them leveled: Rankin County saw thirty families left homeless; in neighboring Smith County, terrified high school students huddled with their teachers in a hallway while the twister tore the roof right off the building. In all, 253 homes were destroyed, and more than 5,000 families were without power for days.
You're at school and the roof flies off, and you stare at the sky and think to yourself that you're going to die right here, right now, and you're only fifteen.
The Bishop of Mississippi asked for immediate help from Episcopal Releif and Development, for families in immediate need. Now they know a lot more than they wish they knew about the power of nature, the fragility of human life. And a lot more about the hand of God reaching out to touch and heal through the giving of faithful people whom they will never meet. That's how you learn of the possibility of goodness after something terrible: we are God's hands in the world, and God heals through us.
