Thought for the Week

by the Rev Peter Willox

Vicar, St John's Church, Ben Rhydding

After the hurricane…

Last weekend it was announced at our church that our two-year roof appeal is now at an end and all repairs have been finished. I didn’t miss the sad irony that as we celebrated the repair of our roof, thousands of homes in the Caribbean were having their roofs ripped off by hurricane Irma. Naturally, after giving thanks to God for the successful end to our project, we stopped to light a candle for peace around the world and particularly we prayed for those caught up this dreadful hurricane.

Inevitably, when such bad things happen many people are left asking the question ‘why?’. In this case, is this the result of climate change? And, if it is, is that change our fault? Are we victim of our own mistakes? For people of faith the question may expand: Has God abandoned us? Or, is this his punishment for messing up his world? Where is God in this?

As I was musing those questions, I was drawn back to the Old Testament. The prophet Elijah had tried to do the right thing but it all seems to have gone wrong, people are out to kill him and he has run away. He thinks he has failed and as a result he thinks God is angry with him. God guides him to a cave on a mountainside and visits him there asking “Why are you here?”. Elijah tells God the truth and God tells him to go out of the cave and watch God pass by. Surely this must mean death but Elijah obediently goes out of the cave. He is confronted by three devastating powers of nature: a huge wind, then a mighty earthquake, and, finally, a raging fire. Are these the punishment that he believes he rightly deserves? But Elijah finds that his future lies in a different question. God was not in the wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire; this was not God’s punishment. But neither was he absent for, after the fire, in the quiet, Elijah hears a still, small voice asking him again “Why are you here?”. As a result, Elijah pours out his heart, all his worry, his anxiety, his feelings of anger and remorse. In the space that this leaves God gives Elijah a job to do to put things right, a new direction, a new hope for the future.

There may be many answers to the question “why do these things happen?” Some of the responsibility may lay with us, and some may lay with God, after all the earth is made from the stuff that fuels stars and can be a dangerous place to live. However, things are as they are and I cannot change the past, but what happens next depends, I believe, very much on the answer to two questions which are inextricably linked: after the fire, or in this case the wind, “Why are you here?” and, what task may God be giving you that brings new hope for the future?