God and life, death and destruction

I rode down the coastline of Gulfport, MS. the last night we were there and to my left was the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen and to my right was total destruction, and God was the author of both. I spoke with a man who had stayed through both Camille (the last category 5 hurricane to hit Biloxi) and Katrina. He said, "Camille was bad, but Katrina was not of this world. There was something other worldly and evil about that storm. It was nothing man could have ever conjured up."
I tried to imagine what it would have been like to lose everything, to be scrambling for my life. These people are running around searching for food and family and water and survival. I can't imagine what it would be like to know wealth and to know comfort and consistency and then have all of that ripped away from me. But it hit me as we drove down the coast that I know exactly what that is like. Everything inside of me is daily scrambling for love and acceptance and approval and life. I search for consistency and stability with everything that I am, like I knew it at one point and managed to lose it. That is what happened at the fall of man, total devastation, total loss. And now, we scramble for life. When I was walking around in the devastation of these people's lives I got the feeling that I was experiencing all the things that Jesus experienced as he came down and walked around in the devastation of our lives on earth. I bet he stood in sadness still knowing what it was to have everything and watching those who had nothing try to rebuild. Maybe the sun still rises to get us to look up from our devastation and believe that it hasn't always been this way and maybe it still sets to make us believe that it won't always be this way. I have never seen anything like what we saw this past week in Biloxi. But I am more sure than ever that "God" and life, death and destruction were coexisting in everything I laid my eyes on.