2004-12-31 / Knight Ridder / By Tom Schaefer The death toll from Asia's devastating tsunami could surpass 100,000. One hundred thousand men, women and children. One survivor, describing the scene, said, "Hell was unleashed." How are we to make sense of the senseless? The answer is, we can't. The problem of evil in this world has never been fully understood and cannot be completely explained. Watching the unbelievable devastation of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India and other parts of Asia only heightens the anxiety about the role of the divine in the midst of destruction. How can God allow the innocent to suffer and die so horrendously? When the Reverand Billy Graham spoke at the National Cathedral following the September 11, 2001, attacks, he recounted how he is often asked why God permits evil in the world. He paused and said that he has never been able to find a fully satisfactory answer. Not even America's pastor, as he's been called,

by Mark Twain (1909) The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before him rose the black night of Space, like a wall. His mighty bulk towered rugged and mountain- like into the zenith, and His divine head blazed there like a distant sun. At His feet stood three colossal figures, diminished to extinction, almost, by contrast -- archangels -- their heads level with His ankle- bone. When the Creator had finished thinking, He said, "I have thought. Behold!" He lifted His hand, and from it burst a fountain- spray of fire, a million stupendous suns, which clove the blackness and soared, away and away and away, diminishing in magnitude and intensity as they pierced the far frontiers of Space, until at last they were but as diamond nailheads sparkling under the domed vast roof of the universe. At the end of an hour the Grand Council was dismissed. They left the Pr