Wednesday.....Culture.....It's Not...Location, Location, Location

It was Christmas Eve 2004, sometime in the late evening when I first heard the reports of a tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Those first reports, for I remember it well, stated that there were 30 (that's right, 3-0) reported deaths. Such was the panic to get news out without spending any time analysing the situation. As you know by now, Haiti has been hit by a major earthquake. The country has seen nothing like this for two centuries. It occurred only a few miles below the ground surface which caused the earth to shake even more violently. We don't know how many people have perished but we do know that suffering there must be unbelievably terrible. There is no time for politics at a time like this as everyone is searching for ways to respond as quickly as possible. I also remember Tom Brokaw standing in front of the Superdome the morning after Hurricane Katrina. You could see panels flapping in the breeze behind him from the sports arena. The gist of his report was that it could have been a lot worse than it was. We learned later that the real destruction would come from levees that would not hold. We have been blessed in this nation. We haven't experienced deaths from earthquakes and typhoons to the degree that China and other Asian nations have. God has had His hand upon us since our beginning and yet today we can become offended when anyone applies our good fortune to Him. Part of the reasons for this blog is in presenting the possibility to you that we are not permanently immune from massive destruction from any one of a number of causes. Churches are praying all over this nation and monies are pouring in to relief agencies for Haiti and many are praying Lord, help these people and (hopefully) forgive us our ingratitude. There is a classic old, old movie from 1938 called Angels With Dirty Faces that starred Jimmy Cagney and Pat OBrien. Cagney was the young tough who became a criminal and then paid for his crimes in the electric chair. O'Brien was his friend who went into the priesthood and walked with Cagney to the execution. O'Brien uttered But for the grace of God, there walk I. But for the grace of God, we would be either an enslaved nation, a poverty stricken people, or we would still be a nation that enslaves others. The sad reality is that we ourselves are becoming enslaved...to our own desire for autonomy apart from God. There is a lot being written about the Tea Party movement that is sweeping this nation, and this is good, but what we really should desire is God's Spirit moving upon us as has happened before. Benjamin Franklin wrote during the First Great Awakening that, [it seems] one could not walk thro' the town [Philadelphia] in the evening without hearing psalms sung in different families from every street. The first step for us as a people might be to say, God has blessed us, we have not acknowledged this, but we acknowledge and proclaim it from this time forward.