text: On All Saints Day in 1755, a massive earthquake struck Lisbon, Portugal  killing thousands,  including many of the worshippers in the Cathedral.  At this point in history, the Enlightenment was getting into high gear.  Voltaire, Rosseau, and many others openly mocked religion over this very question.  Faith, at least in the Western world, has never  quite recovered. 
  
  I have come to know that not only are earthquakes part of the natural order, caused by plate tectonics rather than "divine judgment", that very mechanism is necessary for life to exist at all by recycling carbon back into the earth's crust.
  
  I don't need a "god" to explain earthquakes, nor to protect me from them (I can hire a structural engineer for that).
  
  What I DO need is to be surrounded by (like the author) people who incarnate God’s love, and who take seriously their vocation of bearers of the divine image.