Photos of Japan after the massive earthquake and devastating tsunami are breaking my heart. Many dead bodies washed away by the tsunami are now being found and the people who made it alive are getting to know life as they’ve never known before. Power and utilities, the modern day conveniences we’ve been accustomed to, are sadly missing from their daily existence, as is the shortage of food and drinking water.
My heart aches for those people. I once experienced a waterless evening (only for three hours) as a result of the arctic blast we experienced in winter and I couldn’t even imagine living a life without water. The people in Japan have to make do without, not only water, but heat and the comforts of a normally functioning home. It is sad and my hope is that everyone who is now suffering there will have the spiritual strength to handle their crisis.
Growing up, I was told that each one of us is given the burden that we can handle. It was indoctrinated in me that the more God loves us, the heavier the load we carry in our lifetime. I believe this to be true because I have had my share of life’s burdensome loads, the most recent one I never thought I would be able to hurdle. But, as always, God has been Good to me and just when I was ready to give up, He assured me that I was not alone. He made me realize that no matter how much I was hurting, He was right along beside me to make it all better.
I remember one traumatic childhood incident that happened when I was in grade school. My older sister and I came home to find our house burning. The fire gutted everything… my father’s haberdashery business that sat under our second floor home. Nothing was saved… not even the thick colorful Bible that my father recently purchased for the family. My most memorable image of that sad time was my father pacing the ground, yards from the burning inferno. He was most likely trying to figure out how to start from scratch because in those days there was no home insurance to help people start over.
My father was a very religious man. He believed in God and tried his best to live his life according to God’s rules. After the fire, my family lived in my father’s sister’s home for about a week. Later we moved to a ground floor space that was spared by the fire in the same complex. Reconstruction of the gutted building happened soon after and in no time at all, my family moved back to the building in brand new and bigger surroundings.
Years later, my father’s business flourished and soon after, the family moved out of our second floor residence into a five bedroom house a few blocks away. That second floor space was immediately converted into additional space for my father’s business. If my father fell into depression after the fire and didn’t believe that his business could resurrect from the ashes, where would we be now? My siblings and I might never have gone to college. We might have gone through life miserable like some people if our father stopped believing in the Goodness of God. But because our father maintained an unsinkable hope in his heart and a bright vision for our future, we all passed that dark period with flying colors.
It is my hope that the casualties of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan are spiritually well-equipped to weather their storm. The days ahead after their catastrophe will be very challenging. It is difficult to look at the glass half-full when their bodies and souls are hurting from what recently happened. But if they will all send a collective positive energy to the Universe, their sufferings will lessen in no time at all. People around the world who lift them up in prayers will expedite this painful process.
This catastrophe got me thinking: What if it’s a message from Above that it’s time to go back to basics? What if we have become too technologized that we have stopped living a simple life? I’m not sure what message is given, but I’m very certain that there is one. We just have to find it.
In the meantime, my prayers go to the people in Japan. I’m sure that the world is rooting for them. As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, Japan will smile from its sorrow to continue its progressive stance in our world. After all, it's not the number of times someone falls, but how they get up that counts.
