Apr 26, 2019
By Katrina Goodrich
The past month or two have been a struggle for the midwest. In Nebraska this spring, a record amount of snowfall turned our serene valleys and plains into flooded heartache. Whole communities and towns were underwater and/or cut off from outside aid due to flooding or severe infrastructure deterioration. Livelihoods, passed down through generations, ruined with little hope of regaining what was lost. Stories of people (in some cases children) trapped in isolated homes while flood waters rose and conditions made rescue impossible. Billions of dollars in damage—and the list goes on littered with heartbreaking stories.
When disaster strikes, as Christians, we’re accustomed to seeing it as God’s judgment on a place or people. And why not? After all, the Bible is littered with stories of God’s judgment handed down through destruction on places like Sodom and Gomorrah, Egypt at the time of Moses, and Ananias and Sapphira—to name a few. At one point, relatively early in the history of the world, God is completely fed up with His human creation because “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” So God sends a flood to decimate His creation because He regretted He made them (Genesis 6)—thus begins the story of Noah’s Ark. Revelation also tells us destruction is coming to this world again in the form of God’s final judgment.
I’m not qualified to make a pronouncement about whether or not we are living in the end of days and if the floods and other disasters are judgment on society. Scholars I respect differ in their opinions on the subject—and while the conversation is valuable, sometimes we get so caught up in the idea that God is pronouncing His judgment on the world that we forget that we are not passive onlookers here, nor are we called to be.
Despite the penchant of the human heart toward wickedness, Jesus came to redeem us and if we are going to call ourselves Christians then by definition we need to emulate Christ. He did not stand in the corner seeing bad things that were happening in the world and call them out as judgments, He went to the suffering and helped them and drew them closer to God. He didn’t ignore their sin but worked to help people turn away from their wickedness.
What if, instead of only viewing disaster as a judgment from on high, we viewed it as a blatant call to action? It is easy to miss much of the suffering occurring around us on a daily basis, but a disaster is difficult to miss. What if a disaster is God giving us an opportunity as Christians to get off our derrieres and be involved in our communities? What if these disasters are to remind us there is hope?
CALL TO ACTION writing in speech bubble with megaphone or loudspeaker. Illustration concept
In the days and weeks after the extensive flooding here in Nebraska, there has been heartache, but there is hope as well: vehicles laden with supplies for flood victims showing up at shelters; pilots offering their services to assist in getting aid to places made unreachable by any other means; truckloads of hay being driven to Nebraska farmers and ranchers in need from all across the nation. None of this can completely erase the devastation, but it does offer hope.
Christians are in a position to offer a lasting hope to the world. Natural disasters highlight the need for that hope. Let this upheaval be a call to motion, to not only be active in times of disaster but also in times of relative calm, to keep the momentum going. If you need ideas for how to start moving in your community, the focus of the Women’s Society page this year is to bring you ideas for action in your community. Regardless of the status of the times, Christians are called to action. So act!
