Daily Readings, August 13, 2004

Today's Readings

As I would normally have written this, I was busy trying to build plywood to cover the windows in my back yard. The yard has a wooden fence that could become a missile base in the winds that come with a category-four hurricane.

As I write this, we have been spared, but our brothers and sisters an hour south of here have not. Last Thanksgiving, we went camping at a site in Arcadia, Florida. Arcadia is a poor area, inland from the beaches and far enough from Orlando that it's not a tourist mecca. It is inhabited by the poor, including migrant farm workers during the winter. Downtown is attempting to come back. It includes a number of small businesses, including an Hispanic grocery that appeared to do a great business as I drove by.

If the limited pictures of downtown Arcadia are indicative of the entire force of Charley, the Hispanic grocery is gone. So is the pleasant-looking family restaurant. And the garage. And the Eckard's drug store whose modern architecture stood in such contrast to the rest of downtown. So are the one-story apartments further up the road. They appeared to be primarily made of wood.

Friday morning, before the storm turned, I wondered what it was like to be hunkered down as the wrath of God's nature unleashed itself on your house. I wondered how fragile the shell around us would feel as the world exploded outside. We never found out. And for that I am both thankful and sad. We had more time to prepare.

Still, the following passage rings true to me today...

God indeed is my savior;
I am confident and unafraid.
My strength and my courage is the LORD,
and he has been my savior.

My strength and courage is the Lord. That's what we have when nothing else is left. And for so many people Friday, that's all there was as the world exploded around them. The newspaper accounts talk of noise so loud that people didn't hear trees falling on their houses. Noises so loud that they had headaches from it when the storm subsided.

When you are wrapped around each other in fear that your shell will be yanked up from around you, leaving you to fend for yourself in the tumult, that's when all you have is God.

I can't imagine.