For much of Monday I kept up with Hurricane Sandy’s devastating assault on the northeast and today, as I pray for the United States with millions of others on Day 33 in “The 40 Days of Prayer”  campaign, I am asking myself whether or not God is pretty mad with us right now. Face it, the United States hasn’t exactly been what many would regard as a “Godly Nation” for a while.

So as “FrankenStorm” creates one of the worst natural catastrophes any of us can recall on this, the week of Halloween, I remember what God did to Sodom and Gomorrah and it makes me a little nervous. Oh, I’m quick to say one of the first things I was taught in church was nobody knows what God is thinking and only the biggest fool would ever try to guess. But I’m also saying it is rather ironic Washington D.C. and Wall Street are taking a pretty big hit one week before our country’s national election.

Back when George Bush, the senior, was getting real chummy with Saudi Arabia – and Israel didn’t like it – a hurricane (that just happened to be off the coast of Maine) slammed into Kennebunkport and not a stick of the President’s house was left standing. When the Prime Minister of Japan stood up before his Parliament and sided with Palestinian Authority, the very next day a huge earthquake and tsunami teamed up to knock the island nation five inches off its earth axis.

Many people believe all of that is happenstance but if you’ll go back and research dreadful “acts of God” the world over, it is interesting to wonder if some of them weren’t … er, “man-made.” Throughout the Bible I’ve noticed when somebody messes up, there is a price to be paid to get everybody back on the straight-and-narrow.

Please, this is not to make light of a terrible tragedy that is affecting millions of Americans right now but as Democrats and Republicans alike have prayed earnestly for the United States and its leadership every day for over a month, who among us would have ever thought such a horrific storm would happen one week from Election Day?

As it occurs, there is the belief that this November 6 will be the most important presidential election any of us can remember and, as you study what is being offered up, we are a nation beset by racial problems, liberal and social concerns, attacks on the wealthy, religious bickering and all manner of nit-picking. The truth is the economy, the lack of jobs, the huge welfare burden and a slacking education effort is vitally more important. That’s hard to admit in a “What about me?” society. “Where’s my freebie?” we have learned to ask.

Seriously, what do you think God does when he watches San Francisco baseball fans set buildings on fire and riot in the streets because the Giants just won the World Series? What do you think goes through God’s heart when He – and millions of others –  see University of Florida football coach Will Muschamp take His name in vain and shout profanities in – what – a game played by teenagers?

We're lucky the colassal damage now visible in the northeast isn't worse. How worse? In North Korea the other day ruler Kim Jong-un was so mad at a former vice-minister in the Army named Kim Chol he decreed that Chol be executed by standing at a spot where he would be executed by a live round from an actual mortar. How's that for serious?

It seems the new ruler, who took over his father’s role in December, learned the Army officer was drinking at a party during the required 100 Days of Mourning following Kim Jong-il’s death and was so incensed he ordered that not a speck of the body ever be found, not even a hair on the man’s head. Reports say the mortar round did exactly that – vaporized the guy!

Now if God turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt when she looked back at the brimstone rain down on Sodom and Gomorrah, what do you think might really happen if God got so angry at the United States He no longer wanted to put up with us. It would be a lot worse than a mortar round, believe you me.

I hope God isn’t mad at us but, in all honesty, I can see how He might be. Then again, there are those who believe there is no God so they don’t have to worry at all. As for me I’d rather go through this earthly life believing there was a God, and trying to live by His principles, and find out there wasn’t at the end than going through life believing there was no God, and find out there was a God indeed at the end. You talk about getting vaporized. Whoo-whee.

royexum@aol.com