A rare natural disaster struck remote regions of Nepal and China last Wednesday, and casualty counts continue to climb. The death toll is sobering. The strange nature of the incident is even more so. In this sobering moment, Scripture gives Christians uniquely wise counsel on how to respond to tragedies.
“It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart” (Ecclesiastes 7:2). So let us visit the house of mourning in the next few paragraphs. At around 8:37 a.m. local time on Wednesday, seismic sensors registered a 4.4-magnitude earthquake in the remote mountains of Nepal.
But there was no earthquake, scientists soon learned. Instead, vast quantities of ice and debris had broken off from a glacier, falling some 4,000 feet into the ravine below. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) now registers the event as a 5.2-magnitude landslide. The ice and debris then hurtled down the valley at a frightening speed, burying or sweeping away practically everything in its path — which remained narrow due to the rugged terrain.
Scientists at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development later said the water level of the Trishuli River rose 27 feet in half an hour. The tidal wave carried bodies as far as 150 miles away. As of Monday, Nepalese authorities had recovered 903 bodies, while nearly 4,250 people were still missing. Chinese authorities count 16 dead and 550 missing.
While Nepal certainly bears the largest number of casualties, hundreds of foreign tourists were named among the missing, including at least 90 Americans. Rescue operations have not completely ceased. In particular, Nepalese authorities are trying to dig their way to hydropower workers trapped inside mountain tunnels, which