The room shook quite violently for about 15 seconds!

My wife insisted I accompany her to Rome last weekend to celebrate her 50th birthday - of course I protested but felt duty bound to go anyway! It was our first visit to this extraordinary city where history seemingly oozes out of every nook and cranny. We managed to do just about everything we'd planned but one event was definitely a surprise...

In the early hours of Monday morning I stirred and then suddenly woke up as the hotel room shook quite violently for about 15 seconds. The doors rattled in the doorframes and small pieces of masonry could be heard falling down. In the background was a barely audible rumble. It took me several moments to work out that it was an earthquake. On a couple of occasions there were other very minor tremors. In the morning, I checked with my wife just to make sure I hadn't imagined it. She had felt it too but thought it was all part of a dream and didn't really wake up. Nobody in the hotel mentioned it at breakfast and it had happened too late to get a mention in the papers. So it wasn't until we arrived home that we realised that we had been only 60 miles or so from the epicentre of the major earthquake that hit L'Aquila.

Since Monday I have often thought about the people whose lives have been devastated and in a very small way can identify with what they must have felt. Buildings aren't supposed to shake like that - they are supposed to be solid, immoveable. You can't quite connect what is happening with a lifetime's experience which tells you it can't be happening. We've seen banks and even nations collapse financially but when hotels and houses shake it makes you realise that nothing is secure - except God Himself. Psalm 46 is a great comfort in such times - 'God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way...'