Lord, have mercy.

So, we've had a couple of little earthquakes and now we're waiting to see if we get pummeled by hurricane Irene and all social media websites are fairly littered with Christians crying out for the mercy of God and calling in the apocalypse as well as naming it all as the judgement of a god who is angry about how his political agendas are being thwarted.

Seriously, you guys, it's just weather.  It happens all the time, all over the world.  It comes and goes.  Sometimes there's a lot, sometimes a bit less.

I really get concerned when I hear Christians, especially those who have proclaimed themselves to be Christian "leaders" freaking out about these things.  When people post things to facebook that basically say, "omg everyone quick repent it's urgent we had an earthquake because god is mad that gays can legally be married in our nations capital and our president doesn't care about israel LORD HAVE MERCY" it makes me wonder if those "leaders" have ever truly heard the gospel or if they even know God at all.

Even if God's very nature wasn't merciful, aren't we all under a covenant of mercy?  Do you think God will fail to keep his end of that covenant?  And P.S., that WHOLE covenant is on his end.  We have no end of the covenant to keep, except to say "thanks" and believe.  Sure, there's a bunch of "doing" we can do to make our lives here nicer and possibly win the favor of people, but all our "doing" has very little eternal significance.  The best thing we can "do" is park it in the eternal and just "be" with him.

"But what if my house collapses?"  It's just stuff.  You can get more stuff.

"But what if a bunch of people get killed?"  Everyone is going to die.  You should know that by now.

"But what if people die who are unsaved?"  In truth, you do not know who is saved and who is not and if someone is not saved, there is nothing you can do to save them because you are not the Savior.

All of your worries and all of your fears are in the temporal and you have no control over them anyway.  If that makes you feel like life is meaningless or if it scares the crap out of you, that's just an indication that you need God.  No big deal.  Life is entirely bleak apart from God.  Fact.

So everybody simmer down, k?

Because we stay focused, not on what we can see with our human eyes, but on what we cannot see with our human eyes.  Because everything we can see with our eyes of flesh is temporary but what we cannot see is what is eternal (and what really matters).