One Week Ago

Unless you live under a rock or just don't care I'm sure you've heard about the devastation St. Louis encountered Good Friday, the same series of storm systems that recently attacked Alabama. I wanted to write something, but I had no words, and honestly no real concept of what had just happened to my city. So I didn't write. I just watched. I watched every news cast that covered it. Turned through picture after picture on Facebook. Soaking it all in, trying to get some perspective on what just occurred a mile from my house.

                                   

As I viewed the coverage my mind just couldn't wrap around it. I've lived here 20 years and yet couldn't recognize one picture I saw. Everything broken, tattered, tossed about carelessly by an unleashed tornado. Precious trinkets from homes lay on the ground, entire trees uprooted lying as though they were just branches whipped about by the wind. These things don't happen in the city.

(photo courtesy of kmov 4) 

"Tornado's rarely come into the city." I had just heard a forecaster say those similar words and I freely told friends this news as to calm their nerves as church let out that Good Friday night to sirens blaring warning of the oncoming danger. I, confident that our area would not get hit, went to dinner with friends. It was only when I came home and turned the t.v. on that I knew anything had happened. I called my friend driving that way from my house to warn of the chaos she was about to run into. I had no idea.

Through Maryland Heights, Bridgeton, Lambert Airport, Berkley, Ferguson. I rarely travel that direction during the day, so I went the entire week without seeing the devastation myself. One week and I had already let it slip from my mind. My life was not affected, so my thoughts were not diverted from the every day tasks and family/ministry/relational thoughts I have normally. I had vaguely forgotten, remembering not to take certain ways if I had to travel that way, but never thinking about the people now displaced, not really.

(Photo courtesy of Victor Alexander)

Today, distracted by the sunshine, I took St. Charles Rock Road. I took it all the way down to the overpass. Things began to feel eerily different, disheveled. I began to see business' windows boarded up, blue tarps, bare tree tops, broken limbs. Then there was this clearing. A clearing that had never existed before. Greenery used to hide the homes that sat on the hill. For all I knew looking there, that forest continued on forever. But today, I saw. The thick destroyed and the damaged exposed. I felt I should turn away, to give them the privacy the trees once did but I couldn't. It was all I could do to not pull over and weep for them, for their loss, for their pain. Some homes a complete loss, others untouched, most having major chunks missing from them. The ruins were strewn about, wood beams that once made a home stable now looking like broken toothpicks.

I know my tears would not help. They would not heal. But the sight was all too overwhelming. A devastation our tender hearts were never to know, yet for The Fall. 35,000 without power, many homes completely destroyed, many more people displaced, yet NOT ONE life lost. What a miracle, what a gracious act of mercy from The Sovereign One.

For as destructive and powerful as these tornadoes have been both here and in the south they are but the very fringes of the power of The Lord, The God of Jacob, The Redeemer. A nation's shock at the turmoil these disasters bring, is nothing compared to the awe that will overwhelm the nations when Faithful and True rides in to redeem His own and demolish His enemies.

My dear friends (I know we don't know each other, but I consider us friends if that's ok?) those are your options; to be called His Own or to be an enemy. There is no third, secret option. He is withholding His full wrath so as to give time for decisions to be made. Choose now dear one. As a day will come, and is coming soon, when your choice will be made whether by your own deduction or an end of time.

I pray that you are made new in the life that Jesus Christ offers through salvation. I pray that when your days are done on this tumultuous earth that you will rejoice forever with The King remembering no more the devastation of the past.