For those of us who live along the banks of the Alabama River or the Cahaba River, the idea of tsunami is as foreign as the lands that are often stricken by them.

But, over the past few days we have learned the tremendous and devastating power the ocean, in combination with an earthquake, truly possess.

We all saw footage on television or online of walls of water simply removing portions of the Japanese mainland from the map, crushing homes and cars and killing countless.

The 8.9 magnitude earthquake was the largest ever recorded in Japan and only the death tolls from the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima will potentially eclipse the loss of life from this natural disaster.

The Japanese people are our friends, our allies and in addition to the aid our country will provide, they need our prayers.

They need us to pray for their recovery, their relief and for God to lift the dead from their watery grave or the crushed depths of rubble.

There is no disaster we have experienced locally that can give us any glimpse of fully understanding the vast destruction felt by those in Japan.

All we can do is offer our best thoughts, our heartfelt prayers and our charitable donations to help our friends recover from this horror.