Earthquakes In Our Lives

by Verdery Kassebaum,

Very-Part-Time Administrative Assistant

The Very Rev. Samuel Lloyd, Dean of Washington National Cathedral, after the August earthquake that shook Washington, D.C. and damaged the cathedral: ”Well, it's very distressing. This place [that] seems so massive and so secure and was built to be a sign of God's security has been shaken at its foundations.“ (Interview on NPR, August 24, 2011)

“A sign of God’s security.” We look to majestic churches to remind us of God’s “unchangeable power and might”—we expect them to last forever, riding through the centuries like a grand ship. But a building is made by human beings and wears out even as we do.  And when these grand structures suddenly are damaged or knocked down, we are stunned. It is almost as if God himself has failed us. As if perhaps God himself has somehow changed or given up on us, and we see the face of a stranger instead of our Father and Friend. 

We see God’s power and majesty and eternal solidity in mighty trees or lofty mountainsides, and we call them eternal—“the old eternal rocks,” as an old hymn puts it.  But trees grow old and die and fall to the forest floor, and even mountains wear away over the eons and send rocks crashing into the sea. And being human we ourselves change and wear out and fall to the forest floor.

And we are shaken to our foundations when something unexpected, something tragic happens to us, or when a natural or human-made disaster takes many lives at once. We feel God has failed us, has changed into a being who doesn’t really care about us—or any other humans, for that matter.  

But God is not a building, nor a tree, nor a mountain. God is God, and He Himself does not change. Our ideas about God change; we see God from a different perspective. And if we can hold fast to God even through our own earthquakes, if we don’t give up on Him, our ideas and perspectives deepen. And God continually re-creates, even as we humans continually repair and rebuild. 

Washington National Cathedral will be repaired, rebuilt. And God gives us the grace and strength to repair and rebuild our own lives.

How has God helped you rebuild when you were shaken to your foundations?