For days now, I have sat in front of my television, transfixed by the images that are coming back in increasing numbers of Hurricane Katrina’s assault on the Gulf Coast of our nation and especially on New Orleans.

I have visited that historic and charming city for sessions of the Southern Baptist Convention, and have never given serious thought to the possibilities of disaster in a city that is below sea level – a city existing in what some have termed a “bathtub” or a “bowl,” which tragically is now filled with water.

As is true with any event of such magnitude, some of the images from Katrina’s deadly path along the Gulf Coast are going to be forever imprinted on our minds and in our hearts.

One such image that already has etched itself onto my soul is a television interview with a husband, father and grandfather whose wife had died in the rising flood waters as each tried to hold on to the other in a desperate attempt to stay alive. Finally, she was no longer able to keep her grip on her husband, telling him, “Take care of the kids and the grandkids.”

Like the sufferer Job in the Old Testament, this distraught man – and countless more like him – could have cried out, “If only my grief could be weighed and my devastation placed with it on a scale. For then it would outweigh the sand of the seas. My face has grown red with weeping and the shadow of death covers my eyes.”

The book of Job and such catastrophic events as Hurricane Katrina raise an age-old question about human suffering and misery. And, it has always been true – and it is true today – that the human mind is not capable of arriving at a perfect understanding of happenings that can devastate our national life and our personal lives as well.

I can understand how the dispirited mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, felt as he saw 80 percent of his city submerged – some of it under 20 feet of water – and the death toll on the rise. “My heart is heavy tonight,” he told a reporter. “I don’t have any good news to share.”

Even believers have a sense of helplessness in the face of such unspeakable suffering and misery, and our spirits become frail, our faith often shaken to its foundations. Beneath my “Commentary” is an article entitled “Did Hurricane Katrina deliver a spiritual message?” It reports what people of different theological and philosophical bents believe lies behind such catastrophes as Hurricane Katrina.

Christians often have quick and confident responses to questions about human suffering, and the results can be unsatisfying and even hurtful as we attempt to testify to our faith. Afterward, we may have to approach our Lord, as Job did, and admit, “Surely I spoke about things I did not understand.”

What then can we say with certainty as sufferers search for hope, for encouragement and for comfort when the Katrinas of life come ashore and threaten to reduce faith to rubble?

It will have to suffice to say that God is love and can be trusted – and that when his children can no longer hold onto him, he will hold onto us. The apostle Paul in his letter to believers in Rome asked the question, “Who can separate us from the love of Christ?” and then answered that nothing has the power to do that.

Because God can be trusted, then we must trust – especially when strong winds that threaten destruction are whistling around us. We can find necessary calm in the midst of storms by “simply trusting every day, trusting through a stormy way; even when my faith is small, trusting Jesus, that is all.”

That is good news worth believing – and worth sharing.