I had another, more lighthearted blog in the pipeline for this week, milking my trip to Italy, but current events led me elsewhere. Or God did. My Italian outing still came in handy as inspiration.
During my recent trip to Italia, I stayed in a quaint town on the outskirts of Naples, San Giorgio di Cremano, close to family. It's one of several small cities at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, the now dormant volcano of Pompeian fame. Ercolano, another lesser known Roman ruin overrun by lava, is just two and a half miles away.
I've been to Pompei a few times, but I don't tire of seeing it. There's something haunting and mystical about walking its rutted cobblestone streets and seeing the beautifully intact fresco-festooned villas, knowing that life was snuffed out in an instant one fateful day in 79 A.D.
(Sidenote: Pliny the Elder, somewhat unfriendly documentarian of early Christians, also wrote about the Pompeian eruption to which ole Pliny lost an uncle.)
I trotted past a pretty view of Mount Vesuvius on my morning runs, perversely tickled by the knowledge that the volcano last erupted in 1944 and smoked all the while my parents were in Naples.
I was told that there's been increased seismic activity in the seaside town of Portici. Lots of tremors. I just checked a seismic website and in the last 30 days, there have been 232 earthquakes, although only 14 were above the magnitude of 2.0, at which we humans can feel them. Still. Fourteen feelable earthquakes in 30 days...Yikes! I'm sure parts of my native state of California have similar shakes. I hear folks get used to tremors and they usually don't raise alarms once you've lived with them a while. Gee, is that a good thing?
Point is, tremors signal tectonic shifts. The foundation on which humanity lives is jostling, unstable, often unpredictably so, indifferent to our puny presence. Increased seismic activity signals potential disaster. Unfortunately, there's precious little we humans can do about shifting earth-crust.
The last few years have been a spiritually significant seismic extravaganza. The world has faced a succession of seemingly unrelated tremors--large and small--many of which have proven beyond man's ability to quell.
The Bible says lots about God's sovereignty over all creation. It also says HE alone is the sure foundation, the only source of true security, the only lasting peace.
Let's seek Him for answers and remedies to the many problems humanity faces.
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For further reflection: Psalm 46:1-3
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