We think we’re so smart. But nature is smarter. Our big beautiful cars roll over like toys when hurricanes blow through – as did Harvey and Irma.
In the movie “Out of Africa,” taken from the book by Isak Dinesen, a native runs to report a massive brush fire by exclaiming -- “God is coming.”
We’re more comfortable saying, “Nature is coming.”
Either way, nothing is safe when nature pulls the plug on everything we hold dear, starting with our very lives.
We are at the mercy of the elements. Among ourselves it brings out the best and the worst. We saw how Texas and all of America came together with love for Hurricane Harvey. But now we’ve heard from Hollywood. Actress Jennifer Lawrence, speaking for her kind, blames Trump for Hurricane Irma. In other words, we voted for hurricanes…and the karma is coming.
Of what use is all this technology when it doesn’t work?
Such nonsense aside, we ponder -- Of what use is all this technology when it doesn’t work? We build the most advanced means of communication and in a flash we’re rendered speechless. Our Smart Phones have no chance when the big rains pour and our computers have no life when the big winds blow.
We are human after all.
What’s it all about? We don’t know. Maybe it is so -- God is coming. Sure sounds like it all right.
Must be tough being an atheist when all you have left is prayer.
For certain we’re being taught a lesson in humility…and that is Biblical, whether you take it as purely happenstance or not. Consider the Flood. See parts of Texas, Louisiana, Florida, the Caribbean to get a dove’s eye view of what it must have been like during Noah’s day. Our most prized structures turned to wilderness.
The most powerful nation on earth, and we tremble at the word…the word LANDFALL. God is coming.
Millions running for their lives…homes uprooted…skyscrapers swaying and even toppled…all our sophistication reduced to rubble.
Our wisdom turned to nonsense.
The tower of Babel – was it simply a story, or a warning that there is a power beyond our control?
Perhaps we’re being told something when we reach for the skies through the might of our technologies and in the arrogance of our abundance -- but from psalm to psalm King David reminds us how we are humbled when “The God of Glory thunders…his Voice of majesty is heard upon the waters.”
Perhaps the verities of our ancients are so very true after all…and perhaps King Solomon was not speaking merely for himself but for all time when he lamented that all is futility and vanity. “But see,” he writes in his book of Ecclesiastes, “this I did find: God has made man simple, but they sought many intrigues.”
By seeking too much wisdom, have we, then, outsmarted ourselves?
We may disagree between Faith and Reason, but on this task we can agree, to live each day as if it is our last. The rest is folly.
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva. Engelhard wrote the international book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal” and the ground-breaking inside-journalism thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline.” His latest is “News Anchor Sweetheart.” He is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com