On Friday mornings I attend a Men's Bible Study at my church which begins at 6:30, so I have to get up about 5:30, which is the time my wife usually gets up anyway.
This morning, April 18, 2008, I was lying in bed awake waiting for my turn in the shower when I felt my body quiver slightly for five or six seconds. I thought, "that's a new one. I know I'm getting old (66), but I've never felt my body do that before."
When I came home from the Bible study, my wife said, "Did you feel it?"
"Feel what?" I said.
"The earthquake. There was a 5 point earthquake in southern Illinois this morning shortly after 5:30. I heard it on the news."
That made me feel better. I mean, there are enough bodily changes at my age; I wasn't looking forward to the prospect of my body quivering whenever it felt like it for the rest of my life. It was an earthquake that shook my bed, not my body.
Earthquakes represent a mighty force that God built into our world. And Jesus said earthquakes would continue throughout the church age. He did not say, as some have claimed, that earthquakes would be a sign of the end of the world. What He did say, in Matthew 24, was that earthquakes, wars and famines would be common during the age of the church, and that the world would grow more and more arrogant in its opposition to God and God's people.
But the end, Jesus said, will not come until the Gospel is preached to the whole world. Natural disasters are part of the world God created then cursed because of sin. Each earthquake, however, each tornado, each flood, each famine, should remind us that we are here as believers to tell others about Christ and to live for Him.
Occasionally God has to literally shake me up to remind me of that.
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