St. Louis, Missouri and Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Is the God of St. Louis, Missouri also the God of Tuscaloosa, Alabama??

“No deaths in St. Louis tornado called a miracle” – Headline, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 25, 2011
Only days after tornadoes ripped through the St. Louis area without killing anyone, other tornadoes and storms killed at least 200 people in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And just last month a historic earthquake and tsunami in Japan claimed 14,400 lives, with more than 11,600 still missing.
So why have so many died elsewhere but not in St. Louis? Does God love Americans more than Japanese? Or people in St. Louis more than people in Tuscaloosa? Are people in St. Louis “better” people than those in Alabama who maybe require a little punishment?
Hopefully, everything within you says no. God’s heart breaks over all these tragedies. Simplistic answers don’t add up.
We don’t know why some live through such events and others don’t. God does intervene in a miracle for some, but in most cases He just lets nature take its course. One thing we must not do is sound like the disciples who presumed that God us punishing the suffering. Everyone suffers at times – this we know.
The Bible does tell us that when sin entered the world, God said that nature itself would work against the people. "Cursed is the ground because of you…. It will produce thorns and thistles…until you return to the ground" (Genesis 3:17-19). When the first people sinned, nature itself went awry - and nature will win over every person, and every person will return to the dust from which they came (v. 19). Old age will strike - unless something else does first - and nature will have its say.
Paul says that creation itself "was subjected to frustration" (Romans 8:20), and it waits for the day when it "will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom" (v. 21). Frankly, we do not know how physics would function without "decay" of some sort, and we do not know how God will fix the problem. But we do know that there is something wrong with nature, caused by sin, and God had chosen to allow that - even with the difficulties it causes, even though those "difficulties" are sometimes huge disasters that kill thousands of innocent people. Sin often affects innocent people, and sin has somehow affected nature itself.
We may pray for the day when "the times comes for God to restore everything" (Acts 3:21), but we still have to live in the world gone awry.
Jesus saved His disciples from a natural disaster - the storm on the sea of Galilee. He saved Paul and his companions on a storm-caused shipwreck near Malta. But nature still had its way, for they all eventually died. Many were killed by evil people, others by disease (another example of nature gone awry), some by old age. God allows nature to take its toll. Not forever, not permanently, but God still lets it happen. Someday, I suppose, we will see how magnificent the plan is, but for now it seems quite messy.
Jesus talked about a natural disaster in one man’s life. Who sinned, the disciples asked: this man, or his parents? Neither one, said Jesus (John 9:1-3). Not all problems can be pinpointed to a particular sin. It’s just that nature doesn’t always work the way it is supposed to, and for this particular man, the result was a disaster in his own life. Jesus fixed that particular problem, but most of the time, He allows His people to suffer the consequences of a world messed up by sin, where even the forces of nature work against us.
Jesus talked about another disaster in Jerusalem: the tower of Siloam fell and killed 18 people. It was not a natural disaster, of course, but a disaster nonetheless, a tragedy that killed innocent people. Jesus did not spend time blaming the engineers or the builders. Instead, He turned to the audience and said, "Unless you repent, you too will all perish" (Luke 13:4-5). Take that disaster, and instead of blaming somebody, examine yourself. Get your priorities in order, and the chief priority is your relationship with God.
Bad things happen to good people as well as to the bad. The disaster that hit someone else could have just as easily hit us. God could allow it to hit us just as well as He could allow it to hit them - that’s the lesson we need to consider from these tragedies. We need to turn to God, to trust Him even when the so-called "acts of God" strike close to home.
During his tremendous trial, Job said, "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him" (Job 13:15). We need a similar kind of trust - knowing that the God who did not spare His own Son will never cut us off, though we walk into the valley of the shadow of death, though we enter death itself. The God who spared not His own Son also rescued His Son after He went through that valley, and He promises to rescue us, too. He will give us life again, but to do it, we live in a world that takes life away.
If Jesus were talking to the families of the 18 people killed by the tower collapse, He no doubt would have been as compassionate as He was with the man born blind. When we are dealing with the victims of tornadoes or any other disaster, we need compassion too - compassion that motivates us to help. Many of you have given generously, and no doubt will continue to help during the long recovery period. But we also need to examine ourselves. When tragedy strikes someone else, we do not need to ask where God is - we need to ask where we are, and whether we can do something about it. The only thing worse than nature gone awry is a heart gone cold.
Can we trust God even when nature strikes us dead? Yes, we should, for one way or another, nature will strike every one of us dead. We have nowhere else to turn, for God has the only solution to the problem. But we need to trust Him.
When disaster strikes, God is there, suffering in His people, and working in His people. Therefore, when disaster strikes, God’s people can be found standing with Him, not casting blame, but helping out, making a positive difference, loving as Jesus loves.
Was this latest tornado a St. Louis “miracle”? Maybe it was! But, more likely, it was just a case of people saved by being in the right place at the right time.
God loves Tuscaloosa just as much as St. Louis. We’ve all sinned but God loves us all. In the big scheme, God wins, and so do those who accept His grace. As Christians, we can take God’s love to the victims.
So although we don’t have all the answers, we are grateful for no loss of life in St. Louis and now focus on those whom we can help.

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