"Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for a thunderstorm, to water a land where no man lives, a desert with no one in it, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass?"
Job 38: 25-27

over a week ago there was a tornado in the little "city" i now live in. i wasn't actually in town or whatever, but it destroyed some of the buildings  5 mins down the road. no more late thursday night runs to ihop to celebrate getting thru night class for a while. oh well.
anyhow.
i didn't feel that affected by it all, but a friend of mine goes to a school that got pretty torn up and he happened to be really close by as it hit. obviously he was a little shaken by the whole thing and so i had been talking to him about it, trying to figure out what it was about this natural disaster that had him so unnerved.
around that same time there was this dad who spoke at our chapel service about drugs and the impact they had on his youngest son, leading his boy to take his own life about six months ago. i think the kid was only 21 years old. i struggled to listen.
why did God let this guy's son commit suicide AND a tornado take a piece of my friend's school?
i realize these aren't the worst things that have ever happened on earth, but i wanted to get a little irritated with God anyway.
On my way to the library (i wanted to get in a little Job reading time before class) i saw friend that i hadn't talked to in a while, and he asked me what i thought of the tornado. he understood that it might have had a bigger affect on me, being that thailand didn't have many of those. i wasn't really sure what i thought of it, so i asked him what he thought instead. ><
he thanked God for the weather. .... and boy, and i ever glad that he chose to see things that way! we talked about how these natural disasters and so many other things in our lives remind us that we truly have no control over our own lives. good thing too. cause it reminds us of who does. :)
so even though i probably would never have planned for the guy's son to die, or for a tornado to coming whipping through and destroy my friend's confidence along with the buildings it touched, i'm glad for the way God plans life.
so here's to us learning to trust the Lord! CHEERS!

i am an empty asian bowl
God fills me up with sweet, sticky white rice
sometimes i let people stick their dark chopsticks in for a few clingy grains
sometimes i put on my covering