EarthQuake!

Thanksgiving Day at the computer taking a break.  On Facebook ragging one of my nieces about getting to eat Thanksgiving with the family while Cindy and I had to work.  The chair and floor started to move.  Now I come from Southern Appalachia, coal country.  We have abandoned shaft mines that collapse on occasions and you feel some one reach up and smack the bottoms of your feet from inside the earth, but one tap and its done.  This event was extended somewhere around 6 to 8 seconds (I finished the note to Jessie and discussed with Cindy that yes this is an earthquake and perhaps we ought to get outside)…  I did not now that concrete could move in wave form.  I wonder if “harmonics” is a factor in building destruction in major earthquakes?  This was a 5.9 earthquake centered close to the coast of El Salvador… 90 miles from us as the crow flies.

The next thought that came to mind is how arrogant we mere mortal men are.  We believe we are in control of weather, the earth etc.  We are our own gods!  Think you are in control of your life and circumstances, come to earthquake and volcano country and feel the tile floor turn to water.  After Job, a righteous man, says he wants to tell God a thing of two, God tells Job to come stand before Him and ‘gird up your loins like a man’! (Job 38:3)  Job is essentially speechless as God gives in the next four chapters how we can know that He is God and we will never be.  Job’s response is to clap his hand over his own mouth. 

So does your life feel out of control… it IS!  It’s out of your control.  God gives us “stewardship” over the earth.  It is not ours, it is His.  Watch and see.  Look at the character of men who believe in global warming for example.  God laughs at these men.   A couple of years ago the Governator of California announced a new government program in that state to deal with global warming and that night the orange crop froze on the trees.  We now have this week the announcement that a group of scientists and professors responsible for Al Gore’s famous Hockey Stick graph, have been manipulating the data and deleting emails and data that doesn’t fit their presumptuous ideology… how do you define the word LIE?  We are not little gods.  We are not in charge.  We are servants to one of two masters.  Can I encourage you to read these four chapters of Job (38-41)?  Remember God held Job up as the prime example of a righteous man.  Notice Job’s response to God in 40:1-5 and 42:1-6.   If righteous Job says, “I retract and repent in dust and ashes,” my response to the Only Holy God must have NO ARROGANCE, but in all humility be one of repentance, desiring a life of obedience from this day forward. 

Oh yes – Cindy and I used this as an excuse to call a lot of family and friends back home, because it is new to us and exciting… the local response, well no weed eaters or lawn mowers stopped, nobody else ran out in their yards.  So obviously the locals are in more control than we are!!!  so much for that deep spiritual lesson – grin.

Living an out of control life for the Glory of Jesus Christ in Guatemala and beyond, in His Name Amen.

Happy Thanksgiving friends and family:  In Christ, Dennis and Cindy McCutcheon

http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/last_event/world_el_salvador.html  a link for earthquake data. 

http://dennis51.smugmug.com/Guatemala/Mayan-Community-Fair/10438734_WqYtx#723887863_qBaQp  link to a few new photos of a rural Mayan community, with a medical clinic we have helped equip in Xocola.