Humbled
I'm still trying to process the sheer scale of the earthquake/tsunami disaster. The loss of life is just horrifying.
The speed with which so many thousands of lives have been lost or changed forever makes the mind reel. Reading reports about the disaster--and I can only imagine what it must be like viewing the crisis areas firsthand--is an incredibly humbling experience. It's nearly 2005, and we've all got personal MP3 players and GPS devices and cell phones, but we have no more control over nature's occassional outbursts than did the cavemen.
It's an odd experience, to be reminded that even mankind at his worst and most destructive--militarily, environmentally, personally--pales in comparison to the wrath of a single, brief, apparently random earthquake. And there's a bizarre, detached comfort to it as well, to be reminded that mankind really isn't in control down here, that our very existence depends on the grace of a Creator.
Not to be all lofty and pretentious about it, but it does make you think.