Hillary Clinton said what I was feeling. What a lot of people were feeling after the stunning events in Japan and the Middle East this past week. "It's hard to catch your breath."
On days like September 11, 2001...or watching the layer-upon-layer disaster in Japan - I realize it's hard to find a mental or emotional "folder" to file these mega-tragedies. All those pesky questions about suffering and pain in the world start pressing again to be answered.
If what we see in the heartbreaking TV images is all there is, good luck trying to find any answers. But, thank God, what we see isn't all there is. There's this thing called eternity.
When Kofi Annan became Secretary-General of the U. N., he was asked what made him one of the world's most effective "hot spot" negotiators. He traced it back to a lesson he learned one day as a schoolboy in Africa.
When the class walked in that day, there was a large canvas on which the teacher had drawn a black dot. The teacher asked the class what they saw, and the boys eagerly called out, "A little black dot." Teacher-man responded, "That's funny. I see a big white canvas up here - with a little black dot on it." Kofi Annan explained that negotiating peace settlements was the business of getting people to look beyond the black dot they were fighting over and see the big canvas.
Eternity is the big canvas of God. Today's headline, today's gut-wrencher is the small dot we're all focused on. It's not that the trauma or the tragedy isn't important. It's just not all there is.
And God says He's unfolding a "plan determined for the whole world" (Isaiah 14:26). And everything's done "according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will" (Ephesians 1:11). So when I'm hit by a "quake" in my life or in the world, the Eternity Factor makes me say, "Wait - there's something bigger going on here than what I can see." That helps me. Because it turns my attention from the "why" behind it to the Who behind it.
We're troubled when we can't see much good in the bad that's happening. I sure don't know what "bigger thing" God is up to when all I can see is the bad stuff.. But I do know - from His Book - what God calls the ultimate good. Knowing God. Jesus said, "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the one true God" (John 17:3). We're made by God - and for God. Nothing in life or death matters more than knowing Him personally. Without it, no life after this life. And that's the ultimate evil that could happen to any of us.
God uses a lot of tools to help us see how very much we need Him. Some of them hurt. But it's the hurt of life-giving surgery or the rigors of training for combat. And I know He knows - and cares - about my pain and grief. He watched His one and only Son die a brutal death on a cross for me. That Cross says in blood that God isn't some arbitrary deity - He's a God who's been here. Who's suffered and died unspeakably - for my sin. Who loves me that much.
I'm grateful the dot I see isn't all there is. One day I'll see the big canvas. And I think I'll understand.