O Lord, Make Haste to Save Us

"O Lord, Make Haste to Save Us"

The words were written thousands of years ago, but they sound as if the poet were watching scenes of the last week.

"Save me, O God,

for the waters have risen up to my neck.

I am sinking in deep mire,

and there is no firm ground for my feet.

I have come into deep waters,

and the torrent washes over me.

I have grown weary with my crying;

my throat is inflamed;

my eyes have failed from looking for my God."

This week, as we have watched the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina unfold, we have prayed for family and friends who live in the wake of the storm's devastation, many of whose fates are still unknown.

We have wept over the fate of thousands who we do not know, but whose suffering and grief have become our own.

We have watched in disbelief as situations untenable to begin with continued to deteriorate further each day, making the richest nation in the world look worse than any so-called Third World country.

We have been outraged and ashamed at the seeming callousness and inefficiency of our government, and been moved to tears by the generosity and concern of strangers who have taken literally God's admonition to "love your neighbor as yourself."

As I have watched and listened to the news this week, the words of a song from Gordon Lightfoot have continually gone through my mind:

"Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?"

The question raised in the old ballad about a shipwreck on Lake Superior is theological. Why does God allow such enormous pain and suffering to occur? Where is God when the storm waters rise, when there seems to be no help, no hope, no salvation?

That is a question to which there is finally no answer that is fully satisfying.

But there are answers to that question that I know deep in my soul are wrong.

The flood waters were still rising when those who give Christianity a bad name began their predictable tirades. Hurricane Katrina is God's punishment for the sins of the French Quarter, for gambling on the Gulf Coast, for reveling and drunkenness.

Others have suggested that God must have some greater and good purpose in this tragedy that we cannot understand.

None of these declarations should be acceptable to us. To suggest that God intentionally caused this tragedy for any reason is obscene and nothing less than blasphemy.

So how then do we understand such tragedies? Where does the love of God go when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

Archibald MacLeish succinctly outlined the dilemma we face in his Tony-award-winning play "JB," an adaptation of the Book of Job.

"If God is all powerful, God is not good.

If God is good, God is not all powerful."

If we have to choose between a god who is all powerful or a god who is good--and it looks like sometimes we do--then I will choose the latter.

As disturbing as it may be to realize that God is not all powerful--that God cannot prevent men from flying airplanes into buildings, or stop the waves of a tsunami, or call back the flood waters--it is much more disturbing to think that God is not all good--that God willfully, intentionally causes or allows such horror as we have witnessed this week.

Such a God would not be worthy of love or worship.

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