Hand of God

I have not touched on the disaster that has put the word "Tsunami" on the minds of most people this last week until now. Many articles in print and video have been shown to the world with its amazing and sickening scene of carnage and death that the earthquake induced tidal waves have caused. What shall I say? Hundreds of thousands of people have perished in a morning. We cannot even begin to fathom the loss of life and property or imagine the magnitude of this singular event that will go down in history as the first recorded natural disaster by blog and video as it unfolded before our eyes the day after Christmas. We see but cannot believe.

This story comes from the Telegraph in Britain describing the apocalyptic destruction in Bandar Aceh:

Over a river whose bridge now lies twisted in the water upstream is the suburb of Alau Betari. There is no sign that any clear-up has taken place here. There is a couple of empty body bags but no means of removing the corpses which lie under the wreckage of the town and in the lakes of stagnant water that have replaced the rice fields. It is a vision of Hell. Arms, knees and heads stick out from the carnage. Arnila Abdul Jalil, 35, and her mother, Maemunah Is, 54, stand outside the wreckage that used to be their house, a villa in what was clearly a prosperous part of town. They have returned to see what they can salvage. Maemunah Is is clutching a water-stained, broken plastic clock. When asked why she has taken it, she shrugs and says: "It is all there is." She seems almost oblivious to the bodies of three children lying in the dirt opposite her doorway, heads twisted, eyes staring, swollen tongues protruding from blackened faces. Then she says: "I feel as if the world has ended."

and then this:

A hundred yards up the road, a woman named Maulidar and her husband, Nilawati Ismail, are looking for her brother and sister and a whole list of other relatives: nieces, nephews, sisters, parents-in-law, 13 in all, living in a group of three houses. "They were totally destroyed," she said. "There were bodies there but they were not our relatives." Now she just stands and stares. In Banda Aceh, at least, teams of soldiers are starting to put bodies in bags and leaving them by the side of the road. But it is painfully slow work. Some bodies are taken away to mass graves but many remain. Peter Verbakel, a Dutch aid volunteer, said that people had sunk into apathy out of shock and horror.

What shall I say? This region is dominated by Pagan and Moslem religious belief. There are a few Christians but clearly they are woefully in the minority. This area is a third world envirnoment not because the people are stupid or lazy but because they do not believe in a system that would free them from the bondage of religion. They worship the creature more than the creator. They have refused the Son and thus rejected the Father as well. The Creator gives life and he takes it away of his own volition. Behold! He is a God of majesty and terror.