Deluge in Texas: Lessons for Us

Houston, we have a problem. How should we be looking at the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Harvey? Besides for the obvious offering of support and prayers to the victims, what lessons do we learn from this natural disaster, described by the National Weather Service as “unprecedented & all impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced”?

Maimonides makes an astounding statement, “When a calamity strikes the public we must cry out, examine our lives and correct our ways. To say that the calamity is merely a natural phenomenon and a chance occurrence is insensitive and cruel.” But why? Why should we personalize a catastrophe that befell others, perhaps even in distant locations? We should! Because we are all one – a single organism. The suffering of one person, and definitely of millions, affects each and every one of us.

Please join Rabbi Jacobson as he addresses what this most recent cataclysmic event means to us in our personal lives. What type of wake-up call is this? What can we learn from the fact that despite all our advancements and successes, despite all our technological breakthroughs and unprecedented prosperity, we are humbled by this “act of nature” — as we were humbled by the Solar Eclipse one week earlier — and our vulnerability and fragility exposed, as we looked up, for the first time, to heaven instead of looking down at our phones…  What are we to learn from the winds and the waters wreaked by Harvey’s wrath?

Did you enjoy this? Get personalized content delivered to your own MLC profile page by joining the MLC community. It's free! Click here to find out more.

Subscribe
Notify of
1 Comment
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
David Harold Chester
1 month ago

Philosophy of Change
Change brings pain—again and again.
Pain brings suffering—uttering, muttering
Suffering brings tolerance—with much endurance.
Tolerance brings thinking—and good ideas linking.
Thinking brings knowledge—saves going to college.
Knowledge brings understanding—sensibility expanding.
 Understanding brings wisdom—and where it comes from.
And wisdom makes life bearable—happily declarable!

The Meaningful Life Center