morethanSunday

My heart and prayers go out to all of those who were injured tonight when the floor gave way.  To those who were seriously hurt, I asked, “why?” but don’t have an answer yet.  When something like this happens it brings us close to the looming reality that we are here on borrowed time.  I believe in a God that is sovereign and is infinitely just but it’s tough to see something like this and say to God, why on earth did you allow this to happen?  But it’s just that, it happens.

Two very close friends of mine were in the middle of the fray when the floor buckled and it wasn’t until I finally gathered myself a minute or two later that I realized they were there.  “It happened so quickly.”  For a second, while the paramedics, fire fighters, and police officers were running around the church. I felt my heart slowly descending into a poisonous despair.  I prayed, hard.  I wanted them to be safe.  We went downstairs and found them.  The emergency personnel did a stellar job of keeping everything together; thank you to all of them.  They whisked one friend off to the hospital in a packed ambulance to get some tests done and the rest of us followed by car.  I saw one gentleman get wheeled on a stretcher face down, no shirt on his back.  His shoulder was dislocated.  While we were there, my heart sunk a little more.  We heard whispers of a young lady and how she might not be able to move again.

I think the greatest tragedy is to scowl and point an angry, frustrated finger at the sky and join in with all the other cynics thinking the world is an unfair place where bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people and that some higher being is not out to make it all easy peasy.

I caught myself, though.  I had to remind myself what had happened earlier, so as not to spiral deeper.

Before everything happened, we heard from David Nasser.  I heard him speak years before and was looking forward again to hear his passionate, powerful and moving talks.  He spoke today about needs.  People today have needs, go figure.  They need proper food, clean water, and clothes on their backs.  People (I’m talking to you and me), we need to meet the needs of people.  After what happened today, people are going to need a lot of love and support, and let’s show that to them.  The world is out to tell you that you can’t stop suffering, that you can’t stop hunger, that you can’t stop death.  Of course we can’t, but our God can.  He gave the insane idea to a group of twelve normal people thousands of years ago to love their neighbour as themselves and to love God with everything.  Standing there, with all that was happening around me, I saw people loving people.  The band were the first to help out those that fell through.  They dropped everything and helped out those pinned.  First aiders in the crowd were assessing the situation and making sure that people were looked after.  Those outside were huddled together in small groups crying out to God and praying for safety and well being.

So.  I’ll end this for tonight.  My prayers are with all of you.

Send us out.