The Great Equalizing Power of a Storm

Wave after wave of rain and wind pummeled the North Carolina landscape as a preface for the devastation soon to follow. In the space of just a couple of hours, one tornado after another touched down throwing lives and property into utter chaos from the center of the state to the coast. The damages were incalculable -- in property, jobs, lives and people's sense of security. As many as 60 tornadoes hit the state and at least 22 people died from this vicious line of storms.

As emergency crews try to restore power and eliminate danger, residents try to return to damaged areas and salvage anything of value from the hundreds of homes destroyed in the path of the tornadoes. One minute life was normal. The next moment, life was never to be the same again for thousands. What are we to make of it all? How are we to process such a radical intrusion of the violent side of nature into so many lives?

Then again a few weeks later, hundreds more lost their lives, thousands have lost their homes and the devastating impact of yet another line storms has ravaged the southeastern part of the US. People are afraid and frustrated, exhausted from one clean-up effort and not sure how they can sustain the blow from more storm damage still to come.

In the past year, earthquakes ravaged the impoverished island of Haiti, the villages and people in the mountains of Peru, and most recently the modern, wealthy nation of Japan. The routines of life were stripped of their veneer as these disasters played the role of equalizer for people from all walks of life. Whether you started out with much or with little, at the end of the day the earthquakes reduced everyone to nothing and established a common ground for helpless human beings struggling to survive a severe blow to a fragile world.

Tragedy levels the playing field for all people. There are no breaks for the rich and no free passes for the poor. The suffering that comes with the tornado or the earthquake is no respecter of persons and shows no partiality in who takes the worst hit. Can anything good come from such devastation? The Bible says that God "causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matthew 5:45).

Tragic events such as these often work to show people that our needs really are much the same. The answers to life's hardest questions apply to people from all levels of humanity.

National tragedies level the playing field. Americans from all walks of life realize that in the basics, we are all just alike. We are all human. The common plight of human suffering unites us all as people in need. Suffering is the great equalizer. The waiting room at the intensive care unit makes no class distinctions among the anxious families desperate to hear good news. After a tornado hits, the carnage in the street could have come from a $3 million mansion or a three-room trailer -- it is still rubble. The devastating loss of life is no less painful for the rich than for the poor.

Tough times unite us on the common ground of the human experience. We all need to know that life in this world is never truly secure. Only when we know that there is something greater than this world, that we were not really made for this world, can we find peace. Jesus Christ reaches out to all who find themselves with needs greater than any human solution can offer. C. S. Lewis once wrote, "If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world."

People from every conceivable station in life desire security and peace, freedom from suffering and the disruptive impact of pain. But we live in a world that is broken. Storms come, disease attacks, tragedy hits hard and no one, regardless of how much they have and who they know can claim special immunity. Tragedy is the great equalizer for all people.

All delusions of having control of our own lives are exposed and our need is revealed for what it is: no one is sufficient for the hard things of life in a fallen world. Creation itself is described in the Bible as being "subjected to frustration," "in bondage to decay" and "groaning as in the pains of childbirth" (Romans 8:20-22). But does that leave us without hope and lost in desperation, or does it move us to look for a more satisfying answer than anything this world can offer?

Jesus Christ invites us to bring the weight of it all to him when he said, "Come unto me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). Thousands of folks just like you and me are weary and in need of some rest for their bodies and souls. No one needs to convince them of that in days like these.

As much as want the trauma to end, we can somehow see our true needs more clearly in times of pain than in times of ease. The needs we all face are the same and the storms force us to realize that. God invites weary, needy folks to come to Him and then they will find lasting satisfaction in this world and the one to come.