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Scenic Highway, Floods, and Other Wreckage

Scenic Highway is in a ditch. Or, is that, Scenic Highway is a ditch? Ditch, as defined years ago by my teenage daughters refers to a difficult-to-repair mess, such as a hopelessly bad hair day, as in, “My hair is in a ditch.” 

Perhaps you’ve seen dramatic photos of the portions of this — well — scenic highway in Pensacola, Florida, that collapsed after a mostly unexpected deluge dumped 26 inches of rain in a 24 hour period and zinged over 50,000 strikes of lightning.

Late yesterday afternoon, I turned onto this highway, the only route out of our neighborhood, and was met by one of those huge portable digital road signs:  “Road Closed, 1 mile,” it said. For 22 years I have driven on this gorgeous stretch by the bay, often four or more times a day, taking my kids to school, running errands, going to church. It never occurred to me as I was driving on it that it could drop out from under me.

As you probably know, many landscapes and lives have been rearranged by this week’s storms — tornadoes have ripped through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama, leaving at least 38 people dead and many more homes wrecked. A University of Alabama swimmer died saving his girlfriend from a retaining wall felled by the storm. This morning, weather.com is leading off with a photo of a road in Baltimore that sank under the weight of the storm.

What do we do when a hunk of road drops 40 feet into the bay? What do we do when a jail explodes because of the issues with gas in the aftermath of the storm (this news just in)? What do we do when the landscape of our lives is wrecked?

There are no how-to or 4-step solutions for living with such hard stories. There is, however, a gospel call to live with hope. Here are a few thoughts about what that looks like:

  1. Grieve with the hope of the “one day.” We can weep because Jesus wept. We can grieve because Jesus is a man “acquainted with grief” (Is. 53:3-4). Even as we weep, we know there is a day when there will be no more tears. There is a day, when, as Sally Lloyd-Jones writes in the Jesus Storybook Bible, “everything sad will come untrue.” (Rev. 21:4).
  2. Remember our rescue stories. Yesterday, as I was feeling sad about Pensacola’s losses, I revisited stories I wrote about our previous recoveries from hurricanes. One told about how our son wanted to be a “workerman” like those repairing our house. We gave him a toolbelt, and with a little help from family and friends, he built a fort in the next-door spare lot cleared by the hurricane.
  3. “Restore broken things” (Title of a classic by Scotty Smith and Stephen Curtis Chapman).
  • Pray. The first and most obvious thing we can do is pray. Honestly, to me, a woman of action:-), that effort sometimes seems paltry and small. God doesn’t seem to view it that way. We lift our prayers, and we wait. And one day we may see God restoring — not always in the way we would (surprise, surprise:-) — but by doing something beyond our imagining (Eph. 3:14).
  • Act. What particular ways might God be calling us to be part of “making all things new”? Cooking, cleaning, comforting? Or, if we are the ones suffering the effects of the storm, our restoration act might be receiving the kindness of others.
  1. Look for signs of life around you. It’s a gray and gloomy day, but outside my window, birds of every color and variety are coming and going, pecking a hole in my neighbor’s yard worthy of a digging dog. They are feasting away after a day of fast (I’m just guessing here:-) and they remind me that one day…

“The Lord will make for all people a feast of rich food…”
“He will swallow up death forever, and he will wipe away tears from all faces.” Is. 25:6, 8

Beginnings of a Brokenheart

Take up and Read

If you’ve never read, don’t own, Sally Lloyd-Jones and Jago’s (amazing illustrator)’ The Jesus Storybook Bible, read this, then click to buy. You don’t need children. She writes and he illustrates with the purpose of showing how every story of the Bible “whispers his name.” Still thinking about speaking into brokenness, I read this portion this morning. No more intro, read it. You’ll see why.

“As soon as the snake saw his chance, he slithered silently up to Eve. ‘Does God really love you?’ the serpent whispered. ‘If he does, why won’t he let you eat the nice, juicy, delicious fruit? Poor you, perhaps God doesn’t want you to be happy.”

The snake’s words hissed into her ears and sunk down deep into her heart, like poison. Does God love me? Eve wondered. Suddenly she didn’t know anymore.

“just trust me,’ the serpent whispered. ‘You don’t need God. One small taste, that’s all, and you’ll be happier than you could ever dream…’

Eve picked the fruit and ate some. And Adam ate some, too.

And a terrible lie came into the world. It would never leave. It would live on in every human heart, whispering to every one of God’s children: ‘God doesn’t love me.’
The Jesus Storybook Bible

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