Japan

I"m shedding tears for Japan this morning. The 8.9 magnitude earthquake is bad enough, but the tsunami waves after is more than salt in the wound. The pictures of houses being swept into the ocean, I want to pretend all those houses are empty. I'm watching CNN Japan and I can't stop. Thousands of people waiting for public transportation to get to their families and the trains aren't coming.

I know when tragedies like this happen thousands of miles away to people we don't know, it's easy to tsk and say "what a shame", and "how awful". But I want you to imagine, just for a moment, that you are doing whatever it is that you do every day when out of nowhere the earth moves beneath you and the building you are in begins to crumble. You survive that and thank your lucky stars when the waters come and your entire neighborhood is swept away. You can't do it, can you? It is so unbelievably difficult to imagine.

The people whose homes are now gone in Japan couldn't imagine it before either. They had no idea their lives were about to get, well, seriously complicated at best and over at worst.

Be thankful for right now and pray for Japan.