RESTORE
December 01, 2021
Prayer: Lord, help us to be loving, compassionate and generous to those we come in contact with each day. Amen
Scripture: Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Psalm 51:12 NIV
As we begin the month of December we look towards Christmas, but today we are going to look one day beyond Christmas, to the anniversary of the 2004 tsunami that covered thousands of miles of Asian, Indian, and African coastlines with destruction.
The 33 to 40 foot wave took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, sweeping away everything in its path. Since that day millions of people and dollars have been used to help restore these devastated areas.
Interestingly enough, many experts were interviewed by every media venue imaginable and their perspectives greatly differed from a scientific standpoint. “Two giant tectonic plates, which have been pushing against each other for millennia, suddenly shift. The left plate has been sliding under the right at the rate of a few centimeters a year, but now the top plate suddenly springs up, lifting perhaps 60 feet along a 1,000-mile ridge. Above, the ocean surface hardly ripples. In planetary terms, the movement is “utterly insignificant,” says geologist, Simon Winchester” (Newsweek Jan. 10, 2005). Another geologist, Gianluca Valensise of the Italian Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said, “A big piece of the planet’s mass has been moved around. This actually altered the axis of the earth’s rotation” (Newsweek Jan. 4, 2005).
This was the world’s biggest earthquake in 40 years; it actually took a couple of microseconds off of time. It has been calculated that the energy released was 23,000 times that of the explosion of the nuclear bomb at Hiroshima (Japan). I find their different opinions, especially the “utterly insignificant” one intriguing. Remember these were scientific opinions of the earthquake and tsunami, NOT about the devastation and loss.
Everyone goes through hard times in life and what seems to be an insurmountable tragedy to one person may seem to be no big deal to another. But you have to remember that we cannot be precise in our evaluation even if we have gone through similar situations because our circumstances, our life’s structure, and our outlook are different. We need to listen to the person who is experiencing the misfortune and help where we can.
Your students may do something wrong and think, “What’s the big deal?” But your perspective may be that it is a huge infraction of the rules. Someone may have hurt your feelings and think that you are overreacting, but you are crushed by what they said or did. Remember that how a person perceives a situation is their reality. Communication, generosity, time, and sacrifice are the keys to restoration: restoration of cities, walls, lives, relationships, etc.
Across the globe, people and places are being restored. If there is someone or something in your life that needs restoring, I pray that you will use the focus of this Christmas season to at least begin the restoration process.
Copyright Kathy Branzell. To connect with the author, email [email protected]
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