Impossible to Prepare for This

Impossible to Prepare for This.  Turkish President Erdogan, as he toured the affected regions this morning following Monday’s earthquakes, said: “It is not possible to be prepared for a disaster this big.” The devastation has killed 11,000 people, and the death toll will invariably rise as the search and clean-up continues. The rubble and, grimly, also the white, vinyl body bags lining the scant, remaining open spaces of the cities in southern Turkey and northern Syria are visible in satellite footage. As rescue workers, hampered by rain, snow, and cold, look for survivors, the larger story (as reported by the BBC) involves local criticism of the president’s slow speed at responding to the disaster.

Death is a stern yet effective teacher, whether the learner is actively religious or passively secular, passively religious or actively secular, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or Atheist. When death grabs every international headline, no one can look away from the carnage. What lesson does death teach? We are all, every one of us, mortal.

Denying our mortality is the epitome of foolishness, as Solomon forcefully argued throughout his sermon which we call Ecclesiastes. “No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death” (Eccles. 8:8). “For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them” (Eccles. 9:12). After Monday, the Turkish and Syrian people need no further help envisioning what it looks like when calamity “suddenly falls upon them.” We, the collective world looking in from the outside, can either (wisely) join in on their lesson about our inescapable mortality by reconciling to God now or (unwisely) wait for our own turn at the chalkboard without reconciliation with God. The wise person will learn from the lessons that others have had to learn the hard way. This week in Turkey and Syria, the people have had nothing but learning the hard way. May the Lord truly visit them in their time of great need!

We can only adequately prepare for our impending death by reconciling to God through faith in Jesus Christ, who uniquely and successfully mediated one way for sinners to find peace with God by his death and resurrection. Turkey and Syria’s tragedy adds fuel and faces to our ministry—the church has been given the task of unified proclamation and fellowship in the gospel of grace, "that the world may believe that you sent me” (John 17:21).