But what purposes? Are these judgements? Not in the sense that they are directed to particular individuals or groups of people (although there is evidence for that in the Old Testament). No, these events go back to the Garden of Eden. This is the world outside the Garden. A world which the creator subjected to futility, frustration, vanity (see Ecclesiastes and Romans 8). A world with diseases, earthquakes, storms, floods and fires.
It is a world which will come to an end - in order to be remade so as to fulfil the end God originally intended for it. The disasters act as warnings, glimpses in advance of an end. At a more personal level they also remind us of the fragility of human life. Of human powerlessness in the face of God’s creation, and that there is no guaranteed way of living safely forever.
So these sudden traumatic events draw our attention to God and our own death. Are you ready? As they do they draw our attention to one of God’s great purposes: to gather a people for himself into his presence forever. God’s interest (and ours) is in people. To comfort, heal, bind up, encourage, and direct their eyes, not to nature but to the Creator God who loves them and who has sent his son to die for them so that they can really live safely with God forever.
Dale