SAUCIER — Who’s in control?

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I caught the news before bed — a 7.8 earthquake rocked parts of Tukey and Syria.

Headlines are filled with once-frightening words of epic storms, tornadoes, hurricanes and tsunamis. What was one more?

By morning, we learned of a second quake. This one 7.7. There were 5,200 people dead and fear of thousands more.

Still, in our mortal world, almost 7,000 people die every hour. This would barely bump the average.

Within days, the death toll was at 15,000, then 20,000, and then 28,000.

Now it’s 41,000 and still climbing.

Tens of thousands more were injured, and millions left homeless and displaced. Parents, children, babies in the womb and feeble elderly were indiscriminate victims of a ruptured earth.

We opened our hearts and checkbooks, as compassion demands.

We prayed for the living and the dead. But do we now return to the mundane until the next human tragedy, rinse and repeat?

What difference does this make?

I think of all those books and apps that promise to change our lives, to put beauty, power and success within our reach.

Read the subtitles. “How to get what you want by living fearlessly.” “How to stop doubting your greatness and start living an awesome life.”

Nothing against bettering oneself, but this assumes that we are in control, needing only sufficient will and work to thrive.

Surely among the earthquake dead, there were those who lacked neither desire nor diligence, but this didn’t save them. It’s hard to self-actualize with a building on your back.

If we are not in control, who is? God, you might say. But sometimes that God seems to suffer from the same illusion that it is all about us.

YouTube abounds with preachers of prosperity. The prophets of profit assure us that God wants to rain financial blessings on us. All we must do is believe, have a positive attitude, and give an unstinting tithe.

The earthquake casualties, and most survivors, will never know wealth or physical well-being.

Did they lack faith? Did poverty and war taint their view? Did they not give enough?

We are not in control. Maybe God isn’t either — at least not in the way we want.

Unless our God passes the tragedy test, unless we find God in the effects, not the cause — in the dogged strength of survivors, in the loving help of the suffering, and in those moments when our own lives are upended — then it’s still all about us.

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