“Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the Lord says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’”  Jeremiah 18:11

            It sounds like God sits around planning ways to do us harm all the time.   He puts earthquakes, financial market crashes, terrorists attacks on His giant calendar and, when You read the Bible, He seems to do it with glee.

            God does have disasters on His calendar but He doesn’t want them there.  Disasters have a way of causing a wake-up call, like a firm spanking of discipline, to stun His people into the realization that what they are doing is destructive and going down the wrong path.

            In this passage in Jeremiah, God warned the people over and over and over to stop and yet they continued to sin.  We’re talking hundreds of years of warning.  The disaster came after much patience on God's part.

            9-11 was a terrible disaster in our day.  The flooding of New Orleans and Houston were also horrible.  Then there’s 2020.  Did God plan those?  Yes.  They didn’t happen without His approval.  Every disaster has a purpose.  We can learn something from every hardship.  We also have an opportunity to correct ourselves and find some purpose in the devastation so all would not be for nothing.