Man of Prayer
When the coming of the communists, the Russians in China were forced once again to flee, most through the Philippines. At one time 5,000 of the refugees were living in an Internaltional Refugee Organization camp on the island of Tubabao, located in the path of typhons.

When the fear of typhons was mentioned by one Russian to the Filipinos, they replied that there was no reason to worry, because ” ‘your holy man blesses your camp from four directions every night.’ They referred to Vladika John, for no typhoon struck the island while he was there.”

I believe a better way to say it is that in the midst of the mess we create, there is God making a way out of what seems to be no way. He has an exhaustive foreknowledge of everything; He knew we’ll keep messing up and He has the plan to straighten out everything. I do not know the detail of the plan 🙁 , but I trust Him.

The prophet tells what God, through the Holy Spirit, inspired him to say. The message he delivered is : Heavens tell of God’s glory and the making of His hand is heralded by the sky.

Later on, while observing the movement of the heavenly bodies, scientists had started to understand what the prophet meant.
The elegance and complexity of the nature, the complexity of our own bodies are a reflection of God’s existence and His language. The prophet did not say anything about DNA but, while studying the the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome (our own DNA instruction book), some scientists started to see in it a reflection of God’s plan.

The prophet David knew about light-years?

The creation law is what prophet David refers to: Heavens tell of God’s glory and the making of His hand is heralded by the sky. How? By their spherical arrangement and by the immense distance among them; by the interstellar space, which takes billions of light-years to cross, by the movement of the celestial bodies, of the solar system, and of the planets, with such measure and precision that it boggles the minds of the greatest astronomers in the world.

What did Isaac Newton say – the great English astronomer, who for thirty years had been an atheist and when he discovered the “law of universal attraction” and saw that each planet will attract a smaller one and will not let it get away, or break or move irregularly in the celestial space. He put all his equipment on the table and exclaimed: Great are Thou, oh God, and wondrous are Thy things and no word is enough to praise Thy wonders! Elder Cleopa

“Any evil that exists in this world serves the greater good of God.”

Sooooo….. while I think I know what you mean here, the territory is so treacherous that it almost sounds as if we pause for a moment on this, that the way to get more of the greater good of God going on is to add to the evil… because it serves the greater good of God. More than that, it almost sounds as if evil were part of God’s plan to turn everything to good. And that’s surely not what you mean.

I think the problem of evil involves a little more nuance to this… in that God can find and position us so that we have a shot at turning evil events to our good if we choose… but we have to choose still… and that choice of ours is where God is working from these events. It doesn’t mean that he turns bad things into good, but that he cares more about our hearts and turning them to good even if the circumstances themselves do not or cannot change… as often they do not.

I think the problem of evil also involves the problem of free will and divine providence… and whether what God “allows” is the same thing as what God wills. I think the idea that we can actually sort these things out ignores the fact that we cannot formulate a hypothesis nor test something of this sort… so it is beyond reason’s ability to resolve… and we find ourselves looking for answers beyond our grasp. Does it really take an earth quake for this to happen? Do we not notice it in the disappointment over a child’s limitations, failures and disappointments? and heartbreaks in so many simpler things? or do we simply have to have gigantic scale to notice anything?

Still there seems to be some knowledge gained and made into action. Not always of course, but some. For example opposition to state sponsored insurance programs to rebuild homes built where flooding is expected. I notice the much discussed ‘lower ninth ward’ of New Orleans is not being actively rebuilt whether for home or commercial use.

In our town, a low lying island often flooded near the river is no longer being kept as a golf course and is now a park.

So, there appears to be some energy to avoid larger versions of ‘spitting into the wind’.

Does a really amazingly pious, humble and prayerful person still have to tie their camel?

In my experience, the more we know about nature the less we feel the need to ‘control’ as we make fewer suffering-causing mistakes in relating to what it is.

There is a vast space between understanding and controlling, often the more we can manage of the former the less we feel the need for the latter.

Not one in a billion was uncovered from nature’s secrets. As God’s wisdom does not have any boundaries, neither will it have one onto the ages of ages, since limitless is the Creator’s wisdom, indeed.

We have to control everything (inherent in some of the comments)? No!

We pray, we grieve, we help knowing that nothing we do will be sufficient so we pray some more.

I believe sin is more than ignorance and disobedience to God’s commandment. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, in their disobedience, submitted themselves (and their descendants) to Satan instead of God. God gave the Law through Moses so that we might see our desperately sinful condition and became aware of sin. The “working definition” of sin is: “Sin is a conspiracy of man’s mind with the devil, against God’s Law”.

We have an idea of where the worst groupings natural disasters will occur, including earthquakes; however, whether earthquake, flood, or tsunami, we tend to live with the risk and challenge our odds. That’s why cities like Cinci, New Orleans, and San Fran will always be built and rebuilt. Although the governments and science fields know better as a whole, most people do display ignorance as individuals.

Truth is we don’t know much about where and when an earthquake will occur and how bad it will be when it does.

Maybe the ‘fall of Man’ has more to do with being in ignorance than ‘divine sendings of adversity’. If we had our act together, these natural events would be the object of tourism and not fear. “See the Tsunami from a safe place, scheduled for 4:15 next Jan 16– tickets going fast!!!”