I have found myself feeling that the recent falls of snow have been, yes, beautiful but inconvenient. Meetings and events have been cancelled, car travel was difficult and walking on the pavements equally so. I found myself anxiously consulting the BBC website for the weather forecast. Would I make it to this or that meeting? Should I leave my car at the top of the road so that I can get to evensong? Irritation, frustration and annoyance at the awkward way in which nature has conspired to stop me doing what I wanted to.

And then comes news of an earthquake in Haiti in which thousands have died; where corpses pile up in the streets; where people attend hospitals without doctors or surgeons and watch their children die before their very eyes and I am deeply rebuked about my petty concerns and worries over a blanket of snow covering the ground. Here nature has done something more than cause minor inconvenience to a wealthy nation. Here our moans about roads ungritted look suitably pathetic as we witness images of roads ripped up and reduced to rubble.

And for Christians this disaster should provoke in us two reactions, at least. The first must be compassion and a compassion that leads to some kind of action be it donating to the DEC or getting on our knees to pray for those who have been so suddenly and dreadfully afflicted. But to whom are we praying? And this must be our next reaction. Where is God in all this? We faced just these same questions after the Asian Tsunami and whilst, for those now suffering, this is a secondary issue that comes a long way after the question, "Where can I find food, water, medical help?" It is nonetheless a question that must challenge and shake us to the core. How can God allow this? It is not a question to trouble the atheist, of course, because if there is no God there is no problem of interpretation. Earthquakes happen and people die; the world is an indifferent place. The atheist feels the same compassion but is untroubled by any need to explain and account for the disaster.

But it is not so easy for the believer and we must wrestle with it, not out of philosophical curiosity or to score points but because it challenges our faith in a God of love. It makes us think about who God is and what is his relationship with the world.

Let me briefly allude to the story of the Wedding at Cana, a story we think about at this time of year and that has in it a hint of the tragic nature of human life as well as the promise of redemption. The wine runs out. Poor planning? More guests than expected? Or more drunk than anticipated? We are not told why this failure happens but know that human life is characterised, in part, by loss and disappointment. Things run out. People go hungry, thirsty, die in warfare, face natural disaster. The Bible rarely tries to explain this except, perhaps, to tell the story of a world that is fallen and broken, a world that some profound level is alienated from its creator. It is after all, a world that needs to be saved. Not just we but the whole creation struggles with the possibility of tragedy. The wine runs out.

This vision of a fallen world is not meant to be an "explanation". All attempt to explain begin quickly to sound like an attempt to "explain away". And writer David Bentley Hart warns Christians about being too ready

to utter odious banalities about God's inscrutable counsels or blasphemous suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God's good ends.

We must affirm that this and similar disasters are not part of God’s will nor his judgment. What kind of judgment is it that kills little children by falling masonry? Such a view is clearly, in Bentley Hart’s words, a "blasphemy". And in the same way to say that it is in some fashion God’s "plan" raises more difficulties than it solves, as though there were some kind of inscrutable system that God operates by which he wills (or even, permits) evil to advance his kingdom. All these accounts take us a long way from the God of our Lord Jesus Christ and must be rejected.

The God of the Christian story is not a god who winds up the universe like some great machine and then calibrates by dishing out good and evil as and when necessary to ensure that it runs smoothly. Such a god has manifestly failed, if that is his purpose, and so may be fairly judged to not exist or be some kind of devil. Rather our God offers the dizzying prospect of freedom which includes the freedom for his creation to resist his will and this freedom carries with it enormous risks including the risk that creation would fall into the kinds of tragedy and cruelties that we see in Haiti. But that in this world God has made, evil and suffering happens does not mean that he wills it or that he somehow uses it as a means of shaping the world or achieving his plan.

No loving parent would inflict pain on their child in order that they might "learn a lesson" or fulfill some greater programme of self improvement. Such a parent would be rightly condemned as a monster. But then no loving parent would take from their children the possibility that they might make mistakes or harmful choices or, indeed act in a way that takes from their freedom because to do so would be to deprive them of their freedom and dignity and this would be equally monstrous. God grants to us and his whole creation a freedom that carries the potential for tragedy. (But even here I am sailing to close to an attempt to "explain" ......)

And, yes, in some cases suffering does ennoble and inspire great acts of mercy (and often it does not) but it is no part of God’s desire for the world. It’s not the way he works. The whole of God’s desire is to defeat evil and overcome it, to set us free from what St Paul calls "the principalities and powers" that, for the time being, rule this world whilst at the same time have been utterly defeated in the cross and empty tomb.

And the story of the wedding at Cana reminds us that this victory of God has in Christ been won. In John’s gospel the glory of God is revealed in the One and Only who came to a world that chose, in its freedom, to reject him and yet he, in his freedom, takes on the prince of this world on the cross and defeats his terrible power. The wine has run out but because the true bridegroom is present at the feast salvation has come to the world. And, yes, "his time has not yet come" but it will and when it does the poor, broken, sinful, creation will be redeemed and with it all those who choose for God, choose life. Because of the Victory of the Bridegroom, wine will flow again.

We know something of why earthquakes happen, the shifting tectonic plates below the surface of the world. But there can be no religious "explanation" of the Haiti earthquake that does not sound callous or glib. This catastrophe is not God’s will nor part of his plan. We cannot therefore tidy it away in some neat theological scheme. Instead we look upon these terrible events with the hope of Easter in our hearts believing that one day for broken humanity and a fallen world the wine will flow again at the wedding feast of the Bridegroom.

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