No adequate spiritual explanation can be given for the horrible devastation in Haiti and the region (despite the efforts of Pat Robertson to do so.) We are left with our response:
This from James Freeman Clarke:
"YOU can put into a minute of time only just so much manual labor; but you can add to the same minute thought and love. It is the action of the higher human powers which lengthen life, which turn an hour into a day and one year into ten. Some of the greatest souls who have lighted up the earth have had a short life, if measured by years, but how long, if we consider the number of their great endeavors and accomplishments. Not only genius, but goodness, lengthens our days. How long are the lives of those generous souls who live for others! Most of us each day think of what we can get or do for ourselves; but there are those who acquire the habit of helping others, of comforting, of adding cheerfulness and strength, wherever they go. To those who thus give much is given in return,— contentment, trust in God, confidence in their fellow-men, sweet hopes, peaceful memories.
To fill life full, you must open it upwards toward truth, beauty, goodness. Mere excitement is not life; for all excitements weary, and are succeeded by depression. The hard routine of work into which no love and no thought enter, and which is done from necessity, not duty, leaves us in a lethargy. In order to "redeem time," we must look up, and not down. Seeking things below takes our strength out of us: waiting on the Lord for his higher gifts renews our strength day by day."
Seems pretty hard even on the good days. And yet...
Prayers and Blessings
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