Cataclysm

Asia's wall of water wreaks a disaster of biblical proportions, sparks a bidding war among countries of compassion, and tests the grit of the region's survivors | Mindy Belz, Greg Dabel

“We are in the hands of Jehovah, not Nebuchadnezzar,” Charles Spurgeon wrote his congregation from his sickbed a century ago. “Noah’s flood rose not an inch higher than God’s decree allowed,” he added. “Nothing great or small escapes the hand of Him who numbers the hairs of our head, and keeps the paths of our feet. . . . The wind is tempered to the shorn lamb . . . the load is fitted to the weak shoulder . . . the knife of the heavenly Surgeon never cuts deeper than is absolutely necessary.”

But then a 9.0-magnitude earthquake rumbled four miles beneath a Southeast Asian sea, waking a wall of water that within seven hours swept the Indian Ocean from Malaysia to Mombasa; swallowed coastal inhabitants by the tens of thousands, from lowly fishermen to luxury-class beach frolickers; raised the ocean’s table by nearly a foot as far away as San Diego, and—before it ended—caused the very Earth to wobble on its axis, to lose a fraction of a second and to force global positioning satellites into recalibration. The words of Spurgeon are as surely true as they are sorely tested in the largest natural disaster in recorded history.