One cannot adequately describe the appalling devastation that was wrought in Haiti from the earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince. Today's estimates of the death toll is around 50,000. Maybe three million hurt, and/or homeless.
The mind recoils at the magnitude of sorrow. Turn away, it urges us. We grab for the remote, switch to another channel looking for for mindless pap to soothe our abraded synapses
The images echo other places, where "nature" has struck fiercely. I'm thinking of New Orleans after Katrina. Throngs of people dazed and waiting for help - perhaps wondering, if the camera crews can get here why can't we get food and water?
And a few years ago (2004) the Indian Ocean earthquake and resultant tsunami which is reported to have killed 230,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India. Those images of helpless people being swept into the churning killing surge are unforgettable.
The evening news featured a local man who had just been informed that his daughter who worked in Haiti, was found alive in the rubble of the earthquake. "God is good!" he kept shouting. "they found my daughter."
This seemed ironic to me. How can this man think God is good when tens of thousands of people have been killed, maimed, orphaned - but He is good because He chose to save one man's daughter? What about all the others?
Talk about cruel ironies, this morning it is reported that the saved woman was not his daughter. The Almighty, it seems, was not answering prayers, again.
2 comments:
And Danny Glover says: “When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this [the Haiti earthquake] is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?” Life is full of us humans cursing the darkness instead of lighting one little suicide vest.
Pat Robertson claims that Haiti is "cursed" because of a "pact with the devil" (meaning Vodoo rituals).
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said "It never ceases to amaze me that in times of amazing human suffering somebody says something that can be so utterly stupid."
Then, he stuck a large pin in a stuffed doll that looked a lot like Danny Glover.
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