I was at work in Philadelphia at the Crisis Response Center when the earthquake struck. I was sitting down in my chair, in a room of five people, when I felt the back of the chair slightly jolt me forward. "Hm....ok did the person in the room behind me hit the wall?" I thought. Something seemed weird about that. I looked around and no one else seemed frazzled. So I ignored it. Then I felt the ground tremor. "Maybe a patient fell on the floor and shook the unit. But it continued. Finally someone said "do you feel that?" Then it dawned on me...this was an earthquake. And for a split second, a thought of how things could end at that very moment.
It's now a day later and although I can now chuckle about the biggest east coast earthquake in decades and at all the jokes being thrown at us by west coasters, I have a newfound appreciation of things. For that one minute, the ground that we walk on and usually consider stable, actually moved. We had absolutely no control. I saw videos of people running, but in reality, where could we run? I think about all of those who lived through serious earthquakes and those whose lives were lost at the hands of an earthquake. Just to imagine how much devastation can occur within the span of a few seconds....especially on our side of the coast where are infrastructure, security measures, and natural disaster preparation is poor. And to think....how absolutely terrifying such an experience must have been for those in Japan.
God reminded me yesterday of a few things.
1) Your whole life can be changed in the blink of an eye. Remember what you were doing when the earthquake struck. Imagine if that was your last moment or if all that you had was destroyed just like that. Never get too comfortable that you forget how precious this thing called life is.
2) He has the ultimate control. God controls EVERYTHING. At his command, he can cause the ground to shake and open, the seas to rise and take over the land, and the winds to blow. As powerful as we as humans think we are, we are nothing compared to Him.
3) Never take the little things for granted. The ground we walk on, the air we breath, the views of the ocean, the birds in the trees.....everything is a wonder. And we should learn to appreciate every single little thing that we have.
So with that, I say thank you God for not allowing this East coast earthquake of 2011 to be something of devastation. But also, I thank you for the lessons learned from it.
Love,
B
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