Finding God's Mercy in These Horrible "Natural" Disasters

I feel great compassion and sorrow for the victims of all of these recent disasters around the world, including Harvey and Irma here in the United States. I have never been through a flood or hurricane, so I can’t even begin to imagine what it would feel like to lose everything in a disaster like that. I would not choose it for myself and I certainly would not wish it on anyone else. That said, I am aware of an element of God’s mercy in the midst of these kinds of horrible events. God is desperately trying to get people’s attention in a final series of attempts before His unmitigated wrath will be poured out on this earth following the rapture of His Church. He is trying to cause people to recognize their desperate need for His forgiveness through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, who died to purchase our forgiveness through the price of His sinless blood. How is that mercy, you might ask? Well, if someone who was otherwise on their way to a Christless eternity separated from God forever, instead repents of their sins and turns to Christ as a result of one of these terrible events, then I am quite confident they would certainly view such an event as being God’s mercy. To undergo very real, but very temporal suffering for a comparatively small period of time in exchange for receiving forgiveness and eternal life that would otherwise have never been known is indeed nothing short of the mercy of God.