And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
Luke 17:26-29
On December 24, 2004, the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake shook the world. The quake was 9.2 on the Richter scale, making it one of the three strongest ever recorded. The massive fault fracture stretched almost 800 miles. Because the quake happened underwater, a massive tsunami followed with a wave that reached 100 feet tall. At least fourteen countries around the Indian Ocean were impacted, with almost a quarter of a million deaths recorded. People were going about their lives. Families were on holiday vacations at resorts. Customers were shopping for Christmas presents. Diners filled restaurants. None of them had any idea what was coming. At the time, there were no detection systems in place in the Indian Ocean, so no warning was given. The tsunami struck with deadly force when almost no one was expecting it.
The world tells us that we can control what happens. We are encouraged to plan for the future, but for all of the lost and sadly even for a number of Christians, those plans do not consider God’s purposes. It is easy for us to assume that things are just going to keep rolling along as they always have, forgetting that control lies not in our hands, but in God’s. We have no guarantee of tomorrow, so we must do what we can today. “Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (James 4:14).
