Our recent Big Island earthquakes reminded me of an old friend I'd met when I first moved to California. I knew nothing about earthquakes. Marshall had lived through a severe earthquake in Los Angeles years ago and many after that one. He told me that earthquakes were particularly terrifying since the one thing he had depended on all his life, the ground he stood on, suddenly moved and once shook him off his feet. Marshall could not stand, let alone run to safety.

Our home swayed and rocked here last Sunday, and I thought of my friend and his words.

Similar terror and unbelief gripped a half-million hearts in the Gulf last summer. They were let down by the levees and the pumped drainage systems that were constructed in public works programs many years ago. I used to have an office in New Orleans. I knew that the city and its outlying areas would flood if the levees and the pumps that kept the water level at manageable heights failed. My perception is that everyone in that community knew that sooner or later the city would flood, though the calamity that represented seemed too great to really ever happen.

The horror that this inevitable failure entailed was compounded by what we are told was the country's lack of preparation. We are urged to believe that our government should have been standing by to immediately alleviate the discomfort and dismay that followed the storm. I remember Iniki, and my son-in-law and daughter living in a home on Kapa'a beach with no front wall. No one raged about the lack of preparation for that storm.

One lesson to be observed is the farther we are from the calamity, the further it is from our mind. Iniki affected people dear to me. The recent earthquakes were on another island. Katrina was 4,000 miles from here. It was and is far easier to deal with those disasters from O'ahu than it would be from a house in the shadow of a breached levee or on the Kona Coast. While these disasters were far away, we, like everyone everywhere, are ever exposed to calamity. It cannot be avoided; one day it will be O'ahu's turn.

Scripture says that storms come in life; they are part of living. Scripture says that time and chance happen to all of us. I've learned the unexpected happens to all of us.

We meet time and chance, the storms of life, best by having a circle of friends who really care about us and in that caring, bring a better perspective to what we are facing. I have found my best friend when crises come is Jesus. He gives me hope when all hope was lost. As I write, I think of many situations where all I could do was pray, which no doubt was the best thing to do, though at the moment I may have wondered.

One night I was on an airplane coming home on the Mainland when one of its two jet engines exploded several times. The flight attendant panicked and I prayed.

I said, "In the name of Jesus" over and over as fast as I could. I remember thinking while doing that: "Is that the best prayer you can say in a crisis like this?"

The pilot was able to land us at the airport in Hartford, Conn.

Would that have happened if I did not pray those words those many times? No one will ever know, but I am ready to do it again. I am unashamed to pray. I do it all the time, crisis or calm. How about you? Is it time for you to start?

H. Murray Hohns of Makiki is an associate pastor at New Hope Christian Fellowship. Expressions of Faith is a column that welcomes written works by leaders in faith and spirituality. E-mail faith@honoluluadvertiser.com or call 525-8035. Articles submitted to The Advertiser may be published or distributed in print, electronic or other forms.