Mass Casualties—One At A Time

When the famous newsman Edward R. Murrow broadcast his radio reports about the London Blitz during World War II, you could hear bombs exploding in the background.

Once, Murrow and some other war correspondents heard sirens and rushed to follow a fire truck. When they got to the site, instead of a bomb crater, they found a kitchen fire; An old lady had left a pot on the stove.

To her, that was a disaster.

The fire had scorched her kitchen wall and set her tea towels on fire!

She was distraught.

Murrow said that in his excitement and in his adrenaline rush amid the war bombings, he’d forgotten that little daily disasters go on just hurting people as they always have.

Last night Ginny and I attended our final Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) class. We discussed mass casualities related to terrorism, or to epidemic disease, or to natural disasters.

We plan to attend a huge disaster drill this weekend where we will fight real fires, search debris fields, .rescue victims from a burning house, and extricate victims from under overturned car crashes.

We are both hyper!

We talked about it all evening.

Then when we got home, I found a phone message from Mike, a fireman friend, who was upset because his buddy, another firefighter, recently attempted suicide. Domestic problems shoved this guy close to the edge.

Mass casualties are just individual casualties that happen to happen all at the same time.

So, the Good Shepherd leaves the Ninety and Nine and goes to seek and to save the one lost endangered sheep that has gone astray. The love of our infinite God enables Him to deal with mass causalities one at a time. He lavishes us with individual attention even as the whole world and all the people in it fall deeper and deeper into the consequences of sin.

No matter what you have done, no matter what has been done to you, the love of God is commended towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

A world lost in sin explodes around us, and my forgotten pot on the stove catches the dishtowel on fire.

Christ focuses.

He’s not distracted by things more important than my hot pot.

My friend Barbara’s daughter suffers from cancer. It doesn’t get any more “mass” than that. Mike’s buddy’s pressures push him to the edge, a tragic daily casualty of life.

Even when we try to help, the best we can do is mitigate the effects of sin.

If I pass the test this weekend, I’ll be issued my mask and my cape.

I’ll get my winged boots, and my special gloves that shoot out sticky strands of web so that I can swing from skyscraper to skyscraper while fighting evil doers and rescuing grateful clinging half-clad maidens…

Not exactly.

If I pass the test, I’ll get a slip of paper certifying that I’ve completed Phase One of CERT training.

In my hyper, can’t-get-to-sleep-thinking about the disaster drill, I’ve been trying to remember if there has ever been anyone at any time whose life I have ever saved.

I can’t think of a one.

Except…

When I married Ginny, I saved her from a dull, drab, colorless existence.

Does that count?