Priorities?

Last evening, CBS News aired two stories that really ticked me off.  The first story was about the survivors of the recent swarm of tornados in Texas.  One family survived in their bathroom, huddling under a mattress in the bathtub.  When the storm passed, the only portion of the house left standing was the bathroom where they sheltered.  They were pretty lucky.

When interviewed, the Dad said something along the lines of, "We were in the arms of God; we could feel His arms wrapped around us."  Well, fine.  I don't share your religious beliefs -- I don't share any religious beliefs at all.  But in addition to thanking your Invisible Friend, it might have been nice to save a shout out for THE GUY WHO DID SUCH A GREAT JOB BUILDING YOUR HOUSE!

If you've ever lived in tornado country, you know that you are advised to find shelter in a basement, an interior windowless room, or the bathroom, because, thanks to masonry, load-bearing walls, pipes, wiring and plumbing, the bathroom is the most sturdy and reinforced room within the structure.  Never mind the Arms Of God; the family was lucky that their builder didn't stint on construction and built them the room that saved their lives.

Later in the same newscast, as a sidebar to the $590 million PowerBall Jackpot story, CBS ran a feature on a family that had run into financial difficulties and was about to lose their home when they discovered that they had purchased a winning lottery ticket some months before that had been sitting, forgotten, in a jar on their kitchen counter.  Unfortunately for this family, their teenage daughter had recently died after suffering seizures.  It made their winning bittersweet, to say the least, but they were able to keep their home thanks to the winnings and were thus able to preserve their daughter's room as it was before she died, instead of having to move out and keep her things in a box.

Which was all interesting and heart-warming and thought-provoking until Dad said something like, "I just know that as soon as she passed, my daughter went to Heaven and kept nagging God that He needed to do something for us.  Now whenever we get that check in the month of the anniversary of her death, we'll know that she's up in Heaven still pushing for this family."

Yeah, that's the way it works, I'm sure.  Nice of God to drop you that big check after taking your little girl, though.

I hope it was just a fluke, or maybe a new editor for the news, because I really don't want my news stories, human interest or otherwise, filtered through God-colored glasses.  I'm sorry that the family won the lottery too late to do anything for their daughter.  I'm glad that the other family survived a horrific storm with their lives, albeit at the cost of everything they owned.  But that's life on planet Earth, folks.  There are good things and bad things and they happen every day to all of us.

Let's just keep God out of it, OK?