Asimis:
Oh I agree but the thing that I have trouble absorbing is WHY DID IT HAPPEN in the first place. What about the families of the people who died who PRAYED for them to have a safe trip?
“As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on the faithful. For he knows how we are formed, remembers that we are dust. Our days are like the grass; like flowers of the field we blossom. The wind sweeps over us and we are gone; our place knows us no more. But the LORD’S kindness is forever, toward the faithful from age to age.”
Ecclesiastes 3: 1, 11-20
“There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens. He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into their hearts, without men’s ever discovering, from beginning to end, the work which God has done. I recognized that there is nothing better than to be glad and to do well during life. For every man, moreover, to eat and drink and enjoy the fruit of all his labor is a gift of God. I recognized that whatever God does will endure forever; there is no adding to it, or taking from it. Thus has God done that he may be revered. What now is has already been; what is to be, already is; and God restores what would otherwise be displaced. And still under the sun in the judgment place I saw wickedness, and in the seat of justice, iniquity. And I said to myself, both the just and the wicked God will judge, since there is a time for every affair and on every work a judgment. I said to myself: As for the children of men, it is God’s way of testing them and of showing that they are in themselves like beasts. For the lot of man and of beast is one lot; the one dies as well as the other. Both have the same life-breath, and man has no advantage over the beast; but all is vanity. Both go to the same place; both were made from the dust, and to the dust they both return.”
All things like this are part of God’s plan. Surely the just and the unjust alike died today, and more just and unjust will continue to die because of this. For the just who love Christ, death brings an end to their exile. For the unjust, the Lord gave them every opportunity to prove themselves.
It’s best not to look at tragedies and say, “Why did God do this?” or “Why did God allow this to happen?” If you ask questions like that, a misled conscience could deceive you into believing that God is a cruel God. Quite the contrary. Watch: God will bring great good out of this. Many will show good will towards their brothers and sisters and many will learn that their fate is ultimately in God’s hands. Pray for mercy for the dead and consolation for their families, and ask rather than questioning God’s will in doing this, question, “How can I be Christ to the suffering and homeless?”
