A record number of tornadoes recently hit the U.S. Flooding along the Mississippi River submerged thousands of square miles. Earthquakes shattered Haiti. A more recent earthquake in Japan and the following tsunami killed tens of thousands.

What are we to think of such things? What ought to be our reaction to such convulsions in the world order?
Listen to John Calvin pre aching to his congregation in Geneva. The date is Wednesday Sept. 20, 1559. The text is Genesis 2:7-15. Our pastor describes the lush “terrestrial paradise” in which Adam “lacked nothing.” We hear his throaty asthmatic voice declare, “So complete was the blessedness as regards the outward man that no man could imagine it.” No, our sin-bound minds could never soar to the heights of beauty, comfort, and satisfaction that Adam first experienced in the undistorted sin-free terrestrial paradise.

Then our pastor passionately reminds us of the effects of Adam’s fall: “Therefore, when ...