Today's the day when in 2004 the dreadful Tsunami struck South East Asia. Massive sea surges triggered by an earthquake under the Indian Ocean created a wall of water which fanned out across the Indian Ocean at high speed and slammed into coastal areas with little or no warning. The tsunami killed more than 200,000 people in 13 countries. At least 128,000 people died in Indonesia alone and millions of people found their homes and livelihoods destroyed.
There's no easy answer to the question, Why do disasters like that happen? If there were, someone would have made a fortune from making sense out of such chaos. We know there is something about this damaged and fallen world that means that bad things happen to innocent people. For some people this is a reason not to believe in God, but for many more it is precisely the reason to hold on to the God we meet in Jesus Christ – who does not hide away from the suffering of this world but comes to share in it himself. Christmas is not just about the happy birth of a baby. It is about God immersing himself in the gritty and often painful reality of human life. As the Bible says in 2 Corinthians:
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
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