As I read an
article published by Andries (http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/God-and-Me-Updated-20120215)
it caused me to recall a similar exercise I undertook in response to a chain mail
titled as “The LITTLE Things” that was forwarded to me by an acquaintance, who
serially forwarded any pro god messages she received.
The first
item to follow is the original chain mail I received and thereupon my response:
The 'LITTLE' Things
As you might know, the head of a company
survived 9/11 because his son started kindergarten.
·
Another
fellow was alive because it was his turn to bring donuts.
·
One woman
was late because her alarm clock didn't go off in time.
·
One was late
because of being stuck on the NJ Turnpike because of an auto accident.
·
One of them
missed his bus.
·
One spilled
food on her clothes and had to take time to change.
·
One's car
wouldn't start.
·
One couldn't
get a taxi.
The one that struck me was the man who put on a
new pair of shoes that morning, took the various means to get to work, but
before he got there, he developed a blister on his foot. He stopped at a
drugstore to buy a Band-Aid. That is why he is alive today.
Now when I am stuck in traffic, miss an
elevator, turn back to answer a ringing telephone... all the little things that
annoy me. I think to myself, this is exactly where God wants me to be at this
very moment…
Next time your morning seems to be going wrong,
the children are slow getting dressed, you can't seem to find the car keys, you
hit every traffic light, don't get mad or frustrated; it may be just that God
is at work watching over you. May God continue to bless you With all those annoying
little things and may you remember their possible purpose.
Pass this on to someone else, if you'd like. There
is NO LUCK attached. If you delete this, it's okay: God's Love Is Not Dependent
On E-Mail!! (that's the cool part)
AMEN
And now the response I sent this colleague to this email, which also
happened to be littered with badly drawn pictures of butterflies and puppies:
Where was god's hand in the death of TWO THOUSAND
EIGHTHUNDRED AND NINETEEN individuals of which 343 were fire-fighters and 60
were police officers or the further 184 people killed at the Pentagon, or was
he too busy spilling food down some clumsy fool’s shirt and squeezing on the
heel of the chap with a pair of new shoes. There were 19 hijackers, perhaps if
god had had his priorities straight he would have held them up that day and
stopped them from making their plans.
Instead people burned, suffocated, were crushed and
fell to their deaths, people from over 70 countries in the world, people that
made it to work on time, because no god sought to prevent their death by
causing a car crash in traffic to delay them.
And what is to say that each of the 9 people in
this letter had they made it to work would not have been able to save two
people each, by assisting them from getting out of some wreckage, or leading
them to the fire escape. That letter is horrible and makes light of the many
victims of 9/11 by referring to them as donut shopping fellows, there is no
reason to believe that any of those people were held up by a god.
When I was working in NY a women told me the story
of how her husband died on 9/11 he was working in an office block three blocks
away from the World Trade Centre, but the elevator got stuck that he was in and
he slowly suffocated as smoke from Ground Zero blew towards his building. How
many little things could have happened to prevent his death? He could have
taken the stairs, the lift could have worked. god is not evident in the little things or in
the big things, because he/she/it is not
evident!
Please don't include me in messages like this
again, because cartoon butterflies and puppy dogs don't make up for the fact
that 9/11 is an example of man behaving at his worst
I also added this statistical information from the New York Magazine’s
website (http://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htm)
to my email for the information of the reader:
September ‘11
Statistics:
The initial numbers are indelible: 8:46 a.m. and 9:02 a.m. Time the
burning towers stood: 56 minutes and 102 minutes. Time they took to fall: 12
seconds. From there, they ripple out.
·
Total number killed in attacks (official figure as
of 9/5/02): 2,819
·
Number of fire-fighters and paramedics killed: 343
·
Number of WTC companies that lost people: 60
·
Number of nations whose citizens were killed in
attacks: 115
·
Bodies found "intact": 289
·
Body parts found: 19,858
·
Number of families who got no remains: 1,717
·
Estimated number of children who lost a parent: 3,051
·
Percentage of Americans who knew someone hurt or
killed in the attacks: 20
·
Jobs lost in New York owing to the attacks: 146,100
·
Days after 9/11 that the U.S. began bombing
Afghanistan: 26
·
Total number of hate crimes reported to the Council
on American-Islamic Relations nationwide since 9/11: 1,714
·
Economic loss to New York in month following the
attacks: $105 billion
Finally to
bring the impact of 9/11 home to my reader I included a list of the 2 819 victims
of 9/11 at the end of my email, a list too long for this medium.
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