What Do You See?

This is good writing.

Chris Castaldo:

Pain is disorienting. It's like riding in a train car that appears to be moving forward when it's actually moving backward, when suddenly you become aware of the real direction. Pastors walk through this experience weekly, watching beloved congregants suffer, and occasionally walking through it ourselves. In such moments, what do we see?

The real world has little in common with Walt Disney. Red in tooth and claw, Adam's fallen race bites, grinds, and destroys, and natural disasters strike without warning. This is real life.

It was December 28, 1908, when the earthquake hit, just two years after my family emigrated from Italy. Initial tremors began at 5:21 a.m. A sharp boom, roar, and ground-shaking surge engulfed the city of Messina, just west of the waterway separating Sicily from the Italian peninsula. The sound of gas pipes rupturing, buildings collapsing, and fires raging caused many to flee from their homes. Those who reached the shore encountered the most frightening sight of all, a 45-foot tsunami. Clothed in a sinister-black haze, it rolled toward the coast at 500 miles per hour. A deep, heavy rumbling mixed with the howl of gusting wind greeted dumbfounded onlookers. The cry of terror died in their throats.

Read the rest.