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INTENTION : |
That the victims of natural disasters may receive the spiritual and material comfort they need to rebuild their lives.
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Never before have we seen a natural disaster happening from so close by as the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011. Images flooded the world through television, newspapers and most of all through internet, where they can still be seen today. Outside a disaster area, memory is short: a week, two weeks at maximum before we lose interest. In the area itself, however, memory can last as long as half a century, if not more, especially among those who have lost everything.
Don't forget. Never forget. One image, two images may have struck you, like that of the man on the viaduct. Water pours into the street below him, black water filled with debris. It rises quickly. Boats appear, afloat in the stream. The man looks down, curious, walks to the other side to see the water continue its path of destruction, walks back again, until he realizes, as did the driver of a car nearby him only seconds earlier, that he actually might not be safe on the viaduct. Then he starts running ... Will he have made it?
We call nature a mother, but she's a fickle one. The trees give their fruit, the fields bring forth grain, rice and potatoes, flowers brighten our day in a million colours, if ... If the sun shines, if it rains, on the right time and in the right quantities, if the earth stays quiet and the sea doesn't move. Let's not talk about the other moving creatures with which we share this planet for better and for worse, varying from domestic animals to destructive locusts and elephants. The man on the viaduct: how well did he know mother nature? He seemed to trust her. He certainly didn't see the blow coming, the rage, the tender face turned evil.
Don't forget. Never forget. But shouldn't we get on with our lives, let bygones be bygones? We should, but without forgetting what we saw that day. One could call it a revelation, something normally hidden in the depth of our heart's knowledge. In an instant it became clear to us, again, that we do not have a lasting place on earth, that nature's motherly care has its limits, and that they are uncharted, unpredictable. Even those warned for the tsunami did not immediately run and were quickly taken over by the events. The man on the viaduct may be anyone of us, when nature turns wild.
We can call nature a mother, in a figurative sense. But we also have a Father, Creator of heaven and earth, literally, and it is to Him that we can safely direct ourselves in prayer. Will he have prayed, the man on the viaduct? How many miracles happen during a tsunami? More than we think, probably, and by far not as many as we would want to. Given their rarity, it is comfort that we better pray for. Comfort is more important than miracles, because it helps nature's victims through the day, through the weeks and years after they have been forgotten by the rest of the world.
Don't forget. Never forget. You may be the man on the viaduct, one day. Mother nature binds us together, for better and for worse. But in God the Father we can put our trust, completely, frail and vulnerable as we are, and put before Him our needs, their needs, those of the victims of natural disasters.
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