Sunday, January 16, 2005

Plato as a third grader

Probably the most moving question I've heard to date about the whole Tsunami tragedy comes from the lips of a little third grade girl. What do you do when a student asks: "Why would God tell all the animals about the tsunami so they'd have time to go to a safe place and not tell the people? Doesn't God care about people just as much as animals?

Implying that the animals sensed the Tsunami was going to hit before it hit (which is true), this little girl had made a profound observation. Why weren't human beings created with this inner sense that could forecast when something like this was going to happen? Surely God cares about people just as he cares about animals, but it seems that by creating animals this way God has given them an edge which makes processing this whole tragedy even more difficult.

I don't know why, but I had two dreams last night where two tidal waves came through and ripped up the places where I was currently at and woke up frightened and afraid. Like a third grader wondering why the animals were saved and so many people weren't, I thought again about dreams and nightmares and how God tends to use them to accomplish His work still and that made me even more afraid and confused and bewildered. I think my picture of what happened "over there" is never going to be the same after my last night's sleep because dreams can do what sometimes reality cannot: take you to a deeper place, a truer place...where clarity is sharpened and where reailty is made as real as it can be made and where your life (just when it seems to not make any sense) makes sense indeed--almost perfectly.

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