Hurricane Pain

I was just watching a woman on the news who met President Bush as she had been scavenging for clothes for her son. She was so overcome that as she tried to speak to the President great sobs were coming from her throat. Most women, having an opportunity to meet the President would put on their best dress – but this woman has been reduced to the level of a catastrophe that is no respector of persons. Survival is all that matters.

Earlier today some things were going through my mind – like what it must be like to sleep on the street? How would it feel to have your children say “Mommy I’m hungry” and have nothing to give them. What must it feel like to be poor, with no resources and nowhere to go when the area you live in is evacuated because a hurricane is coming? I thought about what it must have felt like to live through a category 4 hurricane and listen to the howls lifting houses from their foundations, piling cars in a great heap as the sound of shearing metal and collapsing structures roars all around. I don’t know what it is like not to have clean drinking water, or watch people dying around you for lack of food and medicine. I have wondered what it is like to be completely surrounded by masses of people – all at their breaking point – no homes, no jobs, no food, no money, no hope – completely lacking all the basic essentials of life. Watching people go into diabetic shock and heart failure for lack of insulin and nitro-glycerine – medications easily accessible just days ago. The streets are covered in trash and waste – is this a third world country or our once beautiful Gulf coast?

I watched a Dateline special last night and there was a story of a woman who had handed her two year old child up to a woman on a bus as she was attempting to board. In the melee as others were trying to get on as well, the woman got pushed from the bus doors, and trampled to the ground, and watched helplessly while the bus with her toddler on board drove away – to an unknown destination.

My heart is heavy – my stomach is aching – my mind is spinning – what can we do? I am on my knees. Show Your glory even in this Lord. Help us to walk by faith and not by sight. When nothing makes sense, help us firmly trust in You. When governments fail, and our strength has been diminished, help us know that You are the One that holds all things together.