This week, every day, there are images of the power of nature's destruction and news of the increasing toll from the floods in Kerr County, Texas. Most mention the Girl's camp Mystic. Without any focus at all we can avoid unpleasant things and live perpetually in the house of Mirth. Those who open news each day, when they think on it and internalise the suffering, go into the house of Mourning.
A Psalm of David. Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. (Psalm 69:1-2)
This image is nature. Somewhere in the mess there might be a decaying body, human or animal. The water came up, as a powerful flow that ripped out trees and buildings, and pushed them along with considerable force, to above the level of a house roof. Mostly, if we frame it right this would be a place of beauty, but the image is horrific and ugly.
This is not a unique situation, it is not even rare. The Guadalupe River flooded to a similar level as recently as 1987 , killing 10 teenagers at a camp.
Recently in the Manning River Valley and Lismore, Australia similar images were seen. They are not unique. In 1857 a ship captain reported at the Manning, “The Injury to properly by this flood must be immense, as it must be spread over a great extent of country, evident from the nature of the debris thrown upon the coast, whole sides and rooms of house, every description of household furniture, great quantities of form produce, cabbages, pumpkim, corn on the cob ..the bodies of domestic animals-pigs, goats, etc”. Trove)
The same river flooded houses again in 1864 and higher to the roofs of houses again in 1866. In Australia, just 64 years after a record of history began:
June 1852 massive flooding on the Murrumbidgee River swept away most of the town of Gundagai, leaving just three houses standing. Eighty-nine people were killed, more than third of the population. The town was later rebuilt on higher ground. australiangeographic
It it very easy for those who never faced raw nature to be romantics; if we live in cities or suburbia and only see a curated human controlled nature on calm days.
The reason many people were killed in the Guadalupe River floods, Texas, is due to the love of the striking dry landscape with the river. With leisure, we as romantics go to places we see as beautiful. We might mentally aviod looking at any ugliness in nature, just as models are posed and airbrushed and landscapes are framed and digitally edited.
It may be argued that those who wish to control the climate, and prevent climate change, are in fact a continuing part of the Romanticism movement that began 18th Century.
Reality is, as anyone knows who struggles with farming or at any other face of raw nature, that life in raw nature is a struggle against deadly forces, from animals and insects that bite to the powerful forces of the climate. The miracle of the Ancient Egyptian era of Joseph's dream was not the 7 evil years but the 7 good years.
All of the earth is cursed, dying unto death. Lamech was wise,
And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed. (Genesis 5:29)
The truly great lesson of the Bible is shown in the pattern of the wandering of the Israelites in the wilderness - where they were fed by God and yet where the whole generation died.
It is pure romanticism to think all of nature is as a park on a sunny day. A park may be the best humans can make, as a glimpse of the promise of the end of the curse in the Kingdom of God in a new Eden.
In the kingdom the curse of dying unto death will be lifted. Someone who dies at a hundred will be a child, there will be no sorrow, crying, the great beasts will eat straw, children will play with deadly serpents.
And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land: and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods. (Ezekiel 34:25)
As yet – all those camps along rivers, in woods and in wilderness – they aren't safe to sleep in. It is pure Romanticism to think so.
It is utterly foolish to argue that God cannot exist because of tragedy, as the Bible argues the Edenic curse of the earth is the tragedy, which explains every tragedy. The oldest book of the Bible has God sending a storm that kills all Job's children. He said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. (Job 1:21) Job's patience in trial is commended (James 5:11). Either there is a powerful God who controls the elements, or there is an unknown powerful intelligent-like driver. Things exist wether we like it or not. God of the Bible controls the waters that make floods, with or without human cloud seeding,
Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name: (Amos 5:8)
So in all there is a purpose and a shaping of eternal lives, though many may sorrow. In any case now here excepting salvation, there is no other end. For some their best life may be sudden death in youth, as the end of all is the curse of the sorrow and pain of death.
Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world. (Acts 15:18)
In all the Lord taught everyone to at all times seek first the beauty and glory of the Kingdom and to delivered from evil, of every type - daily.
For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. (Psalm 32:6)
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