FRIDAY THOUGHTS: EARTHQUAKE?

The year 2010 has definitely been one of extremes. Extreme cold, 

extreme heat, 

extreme carelessness, 

extreme rhetoric, 

extreme disrespect, 

and fortunately, extreme mercy and grace. 

God isn't TRYING to tell us something. 

He's been speaking quite clearly and concisely. 

Question is, are we too preoccupied to listen?

I woke up to the news that there had been an earthquake in Maryland. 

The fact that I wasn't surprised, can be attributed to my recently seeing a statement, by someone in Houston, indicating their relief that earthquakes don't occur there. 

I was curious, so I checked. 

Just because earthquakes don't happen with frequency in a place, doesn't mean they can't or don't. Texas is not exempt, and neither is the Washington Metropolitan area.

The earth has every right to react. 

I suppose if you were drilled into, raked, paved, raped, polluted, poisoned and under pressure, you'd do a little shaking and shifting, too. 

From the news reports one would think that I would have felt something. 

I can't say that I did. I was sound asleep, enjoying one of my full-color dreams. 

Living in DC, I'm accustomed to hearing everything from exploding firecrackers, low flying helicopters, building and street construction (going on as I type), and heavy trucks. 

I'm near a Metro bus line, Bolling Air Force Base, and jets, headed to Washington Reagan, fly right over my neighborhood. 

Truth be told, the bass coming from my neighbor's sound system, sometimes, might deserve a minor Richter scale reading.

I was more shaken this morning by the news that one of the greatest voices in sacred music was dealing with blood clots in his lungs, and a friend's baby has to undergo surgery. 

Had I experienced the quake, I would have been the first to say so. 

I've never experienced an earthquake, and am not looking forward to that ever happening. 

I have a great love for stillness and stability in all of its forms, and thank God for allowing me to be asleep and far away from all of the activity.

If you don't live in Washington, you'd think it's a humongous place. 

You'd also think everything is a stone's throw from everything else. 

If something is happening near, DC, the media puts it squarely in the city, and that's a little deceptive. 

(I'm always annoyed when Ballou Senior High School, or even the White House is named whenever anything bad happens in SE.SW.) 

DC is DC, and then there's the surrounding area comprising Maryland and Virginia. 

When the media says "DC", relatives immediately think "OMG! It happened on her street! Is she okay?" 

Then they call, and I tell them it's Silver Spring, Rockville, Gaithersburg, Alexandria, Arlington, LaPlata, etc. 

Very few Maryland and Virginia towns are within walking distance to DC unless you live on the boundary line. 

Even when towns are hundreds of miles away, DC crops up in the discourse. 

I realize the media is trying to give a familiar vantage point, but sometimes places get bad press only because of their proximity to a tragic event. 

If it happened in Rockville, I wish reporters would say, "Rockville", and teach the viewers where Rockville is. 

Towns do have their own significance, apart from DC and its historical landmarks.

Still, the thought that the Earth did a little shaking so close by, is a sobering thought. 

I'm sure California residents are calling us wimps, the way upstate New York residents did when we were trudging through over 50 inches of snow this past February. 

Unfortunately, we only hear of significant quakes and those that occur in so-called unlikely places. 

Fact is, there's an earthquake somewhere on Earth almost every day. So much for "Oh, that doesn't happen here". 

Perhaps it would just be wise to be prepared--according to FEMA's guidelines, and more importantly, God's.

"...But what does it say? "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,"that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming:That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved." 

~Romans 10:8-10

"Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands." 

~2 Corinthians 5:1

http://www.ready.gov/america/beinformed/earthquakes.html