Someone might ask, "Why would God allow this? What did those poor people do?" Maybe we should ask if God should ignore our greed and our arrogance and our stupidity. Most disasters come from people who are trying to gain an advantage.

          When Marsha and I moved to Miami way back when, everyone in the church we attended told us of all the sights we needed to see. One lady told us that if we really wanted to see the beauty of Florida, we needed to drive north up the fabled A1A highway, which was just a wide, two lane road then. A1A used to be, before the interstate system went in, the only easy way to get to Miami. Even with the interstates, it was still busy. All the Spring Break photos from the 1940s all the way through now feature A1A. There are parts of that road that run right along the beach. At the time we took our drive, there were many, many places to pull off and just walk over to the water's edge. A lot of little stores and little communities with one story houses that had people of, usually, lower income who didn't want the rat race. They wanted to hear the surf and feel the breeze. It was a fun trip.

          But it wasn't long after that little trip that we heard that various developers were buying up the properties. Higher end communities were planned, money was going to be spent, Florida was to be transformed. Every once in a great while we would go and see what was going on. We wondered how they could build the big apartment buildings (I don't remember them calling them 'condos' back then) right along the beach, actually on the sea side of A1A. I knew a man from our church, Angus Scott, who was in the construction trade. Angus owned a very large company there at the time, but he would not work on that project. He said that there was no way those places could last. It was interesting to watch. Huge sheets of corrugated metal were pounded deep into the sand to stop erosion. The metal was all under the sand so that it couldn’t be seen. It actually increased the erosion, but man in their wisdom, dredged sand from the ocean floor and put it back on the beach. Once the metal ‘walls’ were in place the buildings went up. Angus told me that the wave action under the water would erode in and weaken the base, even going below the metal walls. The water would lead to humidity, which also would do damage. I told him that the builders were going down to bed rock, but Angus insisted that bed rock along a sandy coast was different from bed rock further inland. I didn’t know. To me it was just ugly. But people needed to live somewhere and a lot of people in Miami had a lot of money.

          And so the coastline all along the eastern side of Florida was built up. I had put all that out of my mind until the collapse last week of that building in Surfside, Florida. Surfside is just north of Miami, right on the coast. It was a truly beautiful place at one time. Some would look at it now and say it is beautiful with all the buildings and commercial interests. As the story unfolds we see several different groups trying to put the blame for that collapse onto someone else other than themselves. Regardless who will ultimately be charged as guilty, the fact will remain that scores of people have died because of man’s greed.

          Man is always trying to tame nature, almost as if he is trying to show God a thing or two. Homes and buildings where none should be, almost as though they are tempting God to do something about it. Many years ago I was asked to do a wedding at a home at the bottom of a hill. The home owner also owned the hill and he had put several little ponds on the side of the hill by creating terraces. These ponds were fed by a small stream that ran down the hill. I had been meeting with the couple, but a couple of weeks prior to the wedding I went to the home to pace it all out. The home owner was very proud of this feat and had me walk with him up the hill to see his brilliance. When we reached the highest of the ponds I looked down the hill and remarked that all the ponds more or less lined up on the house. Wasn’t that dangerous? He laughed at my foolishness. Obviously I knew nothing of engineering, which was true. That night it started to rain. It rained for days. And then the bride to be called and wanted to know if the wedding could be at the church. I could tell she was in tears, so I asked her what had happened. The highest pond had broken and flowed into the next pond, which couldn’t take it and it broke. Four ponds dumping a torrent of water onto the house.

          Now, you might think that it was pretty stupid to do what that home owner did. I would say you were right, although I know nothing about engineering. But building buildings on what was once a sandy beach and then ignoring the warnings of impending danger might also be considered stupid. But then, we don’t know much about engineering.

          The Bible says this---Matthew 7: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

            It could be that God doesn’t know much about engineering, either. But it is far more likely that foolish men build their buildings right next to the sea. However, so long as blame can be passed, it doesn’t matter, does it?