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From Rabbi Pete Tobias, of the Liberal Synagogue, Elstree:

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Recently we’ve seen some very frightening images on our TV screens of the destructive power of nature. A typhoon in the Philippines, tornadoes in the United States. It seems that we’re getting frequent reminders of nature’s power and our apparent human weakness in the face of it.

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One particular Â鶹ԼÅÄ News image intrigued me. It was mobile phone footage shot in the American mid-West, showing a view of a tornado just outside the window of a building while those inside recited a prayer. We don’t know what happened, but as the footage was shown, let’s assume the people survived. Is that because God listened to their prayer? And suppose they hadn’t survived? Would that mean that God didn’t listen? Or chose to ignore them?

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Natural disasters raise lots of questions about God. We might ask how can a

compassionate God allow such dreadful things to happen to innocent human

beings? That’s a complicated theological question for a Wednesday morning…

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Remember the Boxing Day Tsunami nine years ago that affected so many different countries? Five years later a documentary crew interviewed three survivors of different faiths who’d seen their homes destroyed, their families washed away. Yet each of them, from completely different religious traditions, believed what had happened was a punishment from God.

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Poor God. Whenever there’s a catastrophe that takes innocent lives, God always seems to get the blame. But I don’t think it’s God’s fault. Nature is an unbelievably powerful force that follows strict laws of physics. The entire universe is bound by those laws and they can’t be changed. Not by wishful thinking, not by prayer. Not even by God.

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What God can – and does – do, I think, is encourage us to respond to such disasters. Our compassion is stirred and we do whatever we can to help those who are suffering. We rescue, we rebuild and we bring consolation and hope to those who seem to have lost everything. We’ve seen it in the humanitarian responses to crises, to the generous donations of those wishing to help. That, I think, is where we find God in our sometimes frightening world.