The pain of the devastation brought by Hurricane Katrina will long be with us. Yet, for all the destruction and personal anguish, there was an inspiring story in what we all saw. It was about the goodness of people who came to sites of destruction, ignored their own discomfort and extended a hand to help the suffering.
It may have looked like a person's hand, but I saw each one as the hand of God.
Long ago, when I was a student at the College of St. Rose in Albany, N.Y., I learned that God works through us. During my freshman year retreat, the priest told us a story that became fixed in my soul:
It was about an American soldier in France when World War II ended. When the young soldier came upon a small French town's Catholic church, there was a statue of Jesus lying on the ground. He picked it up and saw that it was intact, except for one thing: The hands of Jesus had been smashed away. The soldier took some paper from his bag, wrote a message and placed the paper at the base of the statue. He wrote, "I have no hands but yours."
I always have remembered this --- that we are partners with God in giving a hand to help others. Yet, in troubled times, given our human nature, we focus more on the pain than the help, and it becomes easy to berate God.
My brother Joe, who was doused with Agent Orange in the '60s and battled leukemia for many years before his death last October, told me about a person who scolded God angrily for not coming down to earth to do something about the world's many troubles. God's answer was: "I did. I sent you."
I sometimes get criticized for being so high on life when I have had my share of sorrow. People ask how I can believe in a God who lets so much evil exist and get out of hand in this world.
My answer is that I see a larger picture, not just the bad, but all the good, the beauty, the hope that's in this world too.
We must look always at the good --- like the people who responded after Sept. 11. So many good people are helping the victims of Katrina too, bringing food, medical care, hope and prayers to those in mourning.
Our vision of the world can get terribly distorted if we stop looking at the whole picture, if we fail to see God's hand in how much good rises after assaults of horror, whether they be natural disasters or raw evil.
In Katrina's wake, I found myself remembering what our murdered President John F. Kennedy once said. He spoke of overcoming dark days by recalling an experience that President Abraham Lincoln said he had in his youth and had been guided by in all his difficult days.
"One night in November," said Lincoln, "a shower of meteors fell from the clear night sky. A friend standing by was frightened. But I looked up, and between the falling stars I saw the fixed stars beyond, shining serene in the firmament, and I said, 'Let us not mind the meteors; let us keep our eyes on the stars.'"
I knew when I heard this story that those stars are the hands of God, always giving us the light we need to soar above the painful shadows caused by a Sept. 11 or a Katrina. Antoinette Bosco is a columnist with Catholic News Service.
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