WELCOME to The Ark of Mark. Here's hoping your 2005 is off to a great start. Sorry for the long delay since the last issue. Home improvement adventures have diverted my focus a bit, but I will not subject you to another episode of "the hero engineer." I think I am setting a personal record with this issue because it turned out pretty long. I hope that's not a bad thing.

THE WEATHER (FORECASTER) OUTSIDE IS FRIGHTFUL

Many people much funnier than I have discussed weather forecasters who stand outside and warn people not to go outside, but I'm going to do it again because there are so many things I love about TV weather reporting. Years ago a reporter in Lexington attempted to interview a father/son duo during a snowstorm. They were clearly busy playing in the snow and did not wish to be bothered. She persisted and got them to pause to answer a question about the snow. While one of them was being interviewed, the other could not resist the temptation to throw snow at the other on camera. This resulted in a snow-throwing free-for-all with the horrified reporter right in the middle trying to maintain composure and send the broadcast back to the studio while simultaneously ducking armfuls of snow. It was truly a great moment.

A local weather standby is footage of grocery stores packed with people buying milk and bread. Sadly, no reporter ever asks anyone why they are out buying milk and bread in the HEIGHT of the actual storm instead of waiting for the following day when most of the roads will be completely clear. Perhaps weather-folk are not able to think of such interesting angles because they are too busy coming up with clever weather-related words to promote their network. I am thinking here of words like "Accuweather," "Futurecast," "Foxcast," and a personal favorite: "Storm Team." I suspect membership in the "Storm Team" requires ownership of tights and a cape.

I do have a final question that has been bothering me for years. Why do local TV stations brag about how many meaty urologists they have on staff? I'll grant that it's intriguing information, but what do urologists know about weather and what relevance is their body-type?

SEQUELS AND SPINOFFS

I am proud to announce that I have conceptualized a movie and a TV show. The movie arose from witnessing the huge popularity of the biblically based "The Passion of the Christ" and countless teenage moron comedies. My idea is to combine a teenage farce movie with a biblical epic and appeal to an unfathomable audience. The title would be "Deuteronomy, Where's my Car?"

I thought of the TV show when I was describing to a co-worker last week how the driver door on my rugged (old) SUV would no longer close from the inside because the lower hinge was so worn out that the door sagged too much for the latch to catch. Before spending money on a replacement hinge I inserted a scrap piece of wood behind the lower hinge to see if it would shim the door enough to make it work. This twenty minute, no cost repair completely fixed my problem, although if the wood rots too quickly I may have to invest in something more durable and professional, like a chunk of rubber. I was describing this repair to a co-worker who joked that I should take my SUV on the MTV show "Pimp my Ride."

(Note: In the past the word "pimp" was a noun used to describe a person who managed prostitutes. Today's young people have cleverly changed the word to a verb meaning, "to promote.")

"Pimp My Ride" is a show in which (I presume) famous people show off (I presume) their outrageously expensive cars that they subsequently drive to benefit galas where they complain that the government isn't giving enough of your money to poor people.

The thought of taking my vehicle on a show called "Pimp my Ride" made me realize that there must be a market for a similarly themed show for people like me. It would be called "Scrimp my Ride" and feature people skilled at keeping their transportation rolling for minimal cost. A typical episode would include items such as:

THOUGHTS ON THE TSUNAMI

The following reflections helped me think through the tsunami disaster.

Writing this was like a form of spiritual therapy for me. I thought you might be interested in reading it, but keep in mind I'm not claiming that what I think is the best way to comprehend something like this. My faith is really not very mature, but I have considered the issue of God quite seriously. I believe that there is a God. I believe He knows everything and can do anything, and that He loves every person in the world. I believe He loves us so much that He came to earth in the form of Jesus to save us from ourselves.

So what am I to think when I turn on the TV and watch devastated tsunami victims with blank expressions standing among piles of debris? The terrorist attacks of September 11 were the act of evil men and killed around three thousand people. I still can't believe those buildings are gone. The tsunami was a so-called "act of God" and has taken the lives of over seventy people for every one lost on September 11. Think about 9/11 again, and then think about an event that took seventy times the toll in human life (so far). From a cold numbers perspective, it's like 9/11 every day for over two months. If I think about Osama Bin Laden very long I seethe, but who do I blame for the tsunami?

In keeping with my belief system, I suppose that God either directly and purposefully made it happen, or that it was a natural event that arose from His creation and He chose not to stop it even though He could have. In the New Testament Jesus calmed a storm, so surely He could handle a wave, even if it was a big one.

Let's start with the possibility that God created that disaster intentionally. I can think of two reasons that He might cause a disaster. One is that He just likes making stuff happen, and He hadn't seen a good tsunami in a while. I dismiss this because its arbitrary and does not fit the nature of God that I see in the Bible. The second explanation I can think of is that He wanted to smite somebody Old Testament-style. I hope that doesn't sound flippant. Most of God's smiting in the Bible seems to be related to His relationship with Israel (and Israel's relationship with the world), and it was before Jesus changed God's relationship with Man permanently. I do not think this was a direct punishment of any kind by God, and those who suggest such (about this or 9/11) might want to first investigate whether a tree stump is lodged in their collective eye.

So I don't think God directly caused the tsunami. Now I must ask why He didn't stop it. It follows logically that we could similarly ask why He allows children to die from cancer. Why does God let anything that awful happen?

(Of course we cannot know how many bad things God DOESN"T allow to happen).

After 9/11 I received one of those well-intentioned emails that gets forwarded all over the Internet. The subject was basically "Where was God on 9/11?" The gist of the email was that God was with the guy who took his kid to school that day instead of going to the World Trade Center. He was with the lady who canceled her flight because her dog was sick, etc. The point was that God wasn't AWOL, but was behind the scenes trying to take care of people. That's all fine and good and may be true, but that perspective feels callous to me. It makes all the deaths seem more tragic. Not only did thousands of people die in a horrific terrorist attack, but God didn't bother to create a diversion to spare their lives like he did for some other people. He was too busy cleverly diverting a few people to get around to everyone?

So how do I cope with these thoughts?

I wish I could say for sure. Perhaps God turns us loose on the world to mostly fend for ourselves physically (I do believe in divine healing, but we can all expect to die from something at some point), but with all the spiritual help we can ask for. We may not get our prayers answered as quickly or as clearly as we'd like (and sometimes the answer is "no"), but God is there.

If God simply fixed things so that all Christians would be healthy, happy, live to be one hundred and then die in their sleep, you'd see Christianity spread like crazy, but for the wrong reason. Who wouldn't want to be a Christian if those were the perks? Practicality, instead of faith and love for God, would become the basis for Christianity. Do you want your kids to love you because of what you do for them, or because of who you are? I think God wants us to love Him for being a perfect God who is willing to have a relationship with us even though we are flawed.

Let me throw one more perspective at you. We celebrate the full life of somebody who dies at age one hundred. When somebody dies in an accident at age twenty, we understandably mourn a life cut short, but twenty years and one hundred years are both pretty much zero percent of eternity. I think God mourns tragedies right along with us, but imagine the amazing perspective He has when viewing our time here on earth. To Him our lives here must seem like a single decision point in time compared to all eternity. If we think about eternity this way our problems seem like not such a big deal. Conversely, as we approach our unknown finish line here, the eternal implications of our spiritual decisions grow in importance, like an unstoppable wave racing toward the shore.