10 Minutes

Early Wednesday morning straight line winds...the calamatous opening act for what would come later in the day...ripped through a portion of Bamaham that is a mere ten minute drive from home.  Ten minutes from our home...that's as near as the damage is to us.  Ten minutes.  Did you catch that?  Ten minutes.  Not far at all....uncomfortably close, as a matter of fact.  And then 20 minutes beyond that is one of the areas that was literally chewed up by this storm.  Storm...seems like SUCH a benign word for that behemoth and I don't think that the most imaginative mind in Hollyweird could dream up anything nearly as fright inducing as that storm.  Adds a lot of creedance to something I've always thought...real life is far scarier than even the best fiction!

I woke up Thursday morning and went about my business acutely aware of just how blessed I am.  And that weight has just humbled my heart...to the point of several crying jags.  My tears fall easily and I think I've cried just about every kind there is to cry....nervous, sad, grief, joy, laughter, thankfulness, anger, confusion. Seriously, if the jags don't slow down, a prescription might be in order!  No, my house isn't damaged and I don't personally know any of those who died as a result of this wicked freak of a tornado...but this is my home...these victims and survivors are my neighbors.  Children woke to Thursday morning as orphans....mothers woke to Thursday morning childless and/or widowed.  People who have lived all of their lives in the same community will have to walk away from everything that is familiar....because there is nothing left to save.  To not be moved by the tremendous loss of those around me....to not be moved by the glaringly obvious evidence of God's grace and mercy in my life.....your heart would have to be made of stone.  I'm telling you that God's honest truth, the video of the aftermath doesn't accurately convey the level of  abject obliteration.  Standing there...looking out across what used to be a lush, tree filled neighborhood of beautiful brick homes and seeing huge oak trees splintered like toothpicks...those beautiful brick homes leveled like they were no more than Legos....my tears flowed freely and I really didn't care who saw.  I wasn't the only one weeping.

I don't know why....I heard someone say it was "the wrath of God."  I nearly exploded when I heard that.  God doesn't play favorites...he love us all...Jesus came for all of us...his judgement extends to the just and unjust.  To call these tornadoes "the wrath of God" is wrong.  Throwing Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden...turning Lot's wife into a salt lick...the destruction of Sodom and Gomorah...Noah's flood...the man who died because he tried to catch the Ark of the Covenant as it fell...the priest who died when he entered The Holy of Holies because he wasn't wearing the correct garments...Saul being dethroned...Ananias and Saphira.....the list goes on.  All of these stories have one thing in common...the beligerant and deliberate disobedience of God.  I don't believe that these catastrophic natural disasters are "the wrath of God" because they effect both the godly and ungodly.  If God wanted to exact his wrath, he could simply smite each offender one by one...not take out entire neighbornoods and cities and the innocent therein.  I believe that so much of God's wrath was satisfied with the crucifixion of His Son.  Christ's perfect sacrifice made it possible to live apart from God's wrath and instead, live in his love. 

Do not take this as me saying that God is all love, rainbows, unicorns and glitter.  Oh, no!  I believe that God does get angry when he looks down upon the sin and ill of this world.  I believe he is often heartbroken because of our wandering and wayward paths.  I believe that we each pay the price for our sins.  His judgement is perfect but I also believe that as angry as he gets....as disgusted as he gets...he still loves us...still loves me.  As infuriated and vexed (a good Southern word)as The Younglings might make me....blindingly so, sometimes....there is NOTHING that they can do that will make me stop loving them.  I don't always like them but I never stop loving them.  Works the same way with God. Nothing. NOTHING...can separate us from his love....NOTHING.

Ten minutes from my house is a near literal war zone but here's a thought that has gripped my heart in the last few days.  Ten minutes from my house...in any direction...on any given day...people are hurting.  Before this tornado screamed across the landscape of WayDownSouth, lives were hanging in the balance, families were falling apart, hearts were breaking.  People needed to see God's love and not just hear about it.  We send missionaries to foreign countries everyday but how much better would we be if we looked at the mission fields closest to us....the ones that are a mere ten minute drive from our front doors?  Ten minutes in the car...ten minutes on foot...no passport needed. 

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