Look no picture...

When I first started writing this blog I was determined never to upload a post that did not have a picture with it. After all, it was my enjoyment of photography and of words that first led me to experiment with this medium.
Last night, however, "Blogger" had a fault and wouldn't upload any images. The problem still hadn't been resolved this morning. So what I was going to write about will have to wait. And then... as I started to write this picture-less piece the electricity suddenly went off and the PC died instantly. (The handiwork of the plumber who is currently installing a new shower - a fault in his extension lead triggering an RCD circuit breaker. You just needed to know this, didn't you?)
Anyway, these last few days have reminded me just how much I rely on electricity and various forms of technology and how, most of the time, I just take them for granted.
Of course, my wake-up calls have been pretty benign. Spare a thought, and a prayer, for all those who have been caught in the path of Hurricane Dean and other powerful and destructive natural events in recent months.
It is all too easy for us in the developed world to imagine that we are always in control, but the reality is that this world is still sometimes a pretty hostile place. And we inhabit just one small, fragile planet suspended in an unimaginably vast universe.
Strangely enough, the knowledge of just how small and puny we really are can inspire either faith or atheism. Some look at the vastness of the cosmos and laugh at the idea of a deity who might be in the slightest bit interested in one small speck of a planet, far less individual human lives: others look at the vastness of the cosmos and are filled with awe and worship and, an admittedly illogical, sense of the nearness of the Creator of it all. I can't explain the difference.
But neither can I explain the INdifference of those who take no account at all of the world in which we live and whose 'god' turns out to be like one of the old Roman household gods - small enough to put on the mantelpiece and under our own control.
Someone once asked "Is your god too small?" and I suppose that is the question I am asking too.
It was the question that was asked in a very stark and brutal way of the Old Testament character Job. the only answer he got was in the whirlwind, but somehow that seems to me to be much more authentic than the platitudes of Job's 'comforters'.

Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm.
He said: "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.
"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? ....

You should read the rest ... amazing stuff.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, it means I ought to do a whole lot of writing here to catch up... but, don't worry, I won't. The poetry of the Book of Job more than makes up for the lack of pictures.