If nothing else, this has been an earth-shaking week! First we'd been reminded from every possible media outlet that today (at least it's today as I write) is the 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Though it happened a decade ago, some of those feelings are still very much alive: the horror, the tears of compassion for my neighbours to the south and the sense of pride and appreciation for my fellow Canadians in Gander, Nfld. and across our nation who stepped in to help.
Then if that wasn't enough emotion for one week, this past Wednesday the eyes of the country moved to a small town, population 4,200, on the eastern edges of the province of British Columbia. There the parents of a three-year-old became participants in a drama that's every parent's worst nightmare: a missing child. Abducted from his bed by a convicted sex offender, little Keinan Hebert was missing until this morning. He had been returned in the middle of the night, unharmed. It was as if the earth shook in celebration of what even the police termed "a miracle."
Next there was Friday - just two days ago - when the earth shook, literally. "Oh no," I found myself groaning, "not another attack of vertigo." Except that vertigo had never caused the doors of my office cupboard to rattle or the floor to rise and fall beneath my chair. It wasn't the big earthquake we're warned is coming but that 6.4 shaker was enough.
One of these was enough for a lifetime and yet we live in a world where emotional and spiritual attacks, abductions and shakings take place on a regular basis. Reminds me of an old song "When all around is sinking sand, on Christ the Solid Rock I stand."
Where's your security?
