Natural disasters shouldn’t happen, but they do happen. How should we respond to them? How can we hope? As Christians, we must not respond by ignoring them, fearing them, or despairing. Instead, we must recognize that we are unsafe, but we’re also not alone: God is with us. Like him, we should join the needy and give them what we have to help. Someday, God will lead us through disaster into a healed and finally safe world. Until then, we must take up his cross and follow Jesus into the darkest places of human suffering.
NASA Earth Observatory. Image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using VIIRS Day Night Band data. Public domain.