Flashback

I was just looking at some of the photos out of Tennessee and Alabama after last night's storm.The devastation reminded me of Katrina.
I went to the Mississippi Gulf Coast a couple weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit. It was life-changing. I had seen pictures on television and in the newspapers, but it was nothing like seeing it for real. When you're looking at the photos or at TV, your peripheral visions tells you everything is OK. The dog is asleep beside you on the couch, the lights are on, the laundry is sitting, folded, in a basket by your feet.
But when you're there, nothing around you says it's OK. Rubble is everywhere. Trees are splintered, roads are washed out, houses are reduced to piles of unidentifiable trash. In some places, all that's left is the foundation or the front steps.
Rescue workers spray paint codes on the sides of houses or on a slab of concrete or whatever is left. The number in the lower right-hand corner is the number of dead found inside a house, I talked to a teacher who discovered two of her students were dead when she drove by their houses and saw the numbers.
People lost everything. You can't imagine what it is to lose everything until you've seen it. People don't even know what to ask for when someone offers them what they need. They don't realize they've lost their toothbrushes and combs, underwear and towels. When it hits them, all they can do is cry.
I stood next to a mother once after a flood as she discovered all her photos were ruined. She pulled apart the sodden pile and wept.
We worked in 90-plus-degree heat. I think every one of us suffered from heat exhaustion at least once, and the air didn't cool down or dry out much during the night as we tried to fall asleep in our tents.
One of the men there with me said he couldn't imgine the first person to settle there deciding that this would be a good place to call home. It was incredibly uncomfortable.
But it was the best work I have ever done,
People who know me know that I'm a liberal Christian; the group I went with is Evangelical Christian and very conservative, Our beliefs are totaly opposite on several issues. One friend commended me on my patience in being able to deal with it.
But the work wasn't about theology. God was present every time we loaded up a car. Each box of groceries had a Bible in it, an it was the first thing people pulled out when they opened the box. It didn't matter whether a liberal or conervative handed them that box; what mattered was that God calls us to help those in distress -- feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick, comfort the afflicted. We prayed together at night before we went into our tents. Nobody cared whether I said "Father/Mother God;" we all knew we were speaking to the same God when we asked for comfort for the people we had worked with and fed all day.
I still remember a lot of the faces I saw during those days, and the stories that spilled out of the cars as soon as the windows were rolled down.
God bless the people who will go to help these storm victims. I wish I could go with them.