I seem to be almost to the point where I just don’t want to watch the Evening News… it all seems so devastating and depressing. Tonight we are still watching the Dorian tract… hoping and praying that our family and friends, indeed all people are safe from any more destruction. I look back at the Bahamas which has lost so much to this monster hurricane. Their islands look like a trash dump… after Dorian just sat there and spun its disastrous havoc… destroying everything in sight. My heart is broken for them. I can’t imagine what they are feeling. They must feel lost, abandoned, and alone.
I watched Norah O’Donnell tonight interviewing some of the survivors of this disaster. One young man watched his young son washed away by the flood waters… with his hands reaching toward his dad. My heart broke. An older couple told about their home saying “It was all gone. Nothing is left, nothing.” His wife cried as she said (pointing to her soiled dress) “I’ve had this on for four days.” I look at this and feel almost in shock at the mass scale of this disaster. The pictures look out across the landscape and there seems to be total destruction everywhere you look. Everything is destroyed.
The Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Hubert Minnis said the other day: “It was like war and the enemy had all the weapons and we had none.” He broke down in tears addressing a news conference, calling it “probably the most sad and worst day of my life.”
Now switch that 185 mph wind and 18 to 23 feet of storm water surge to your home town – to your neighborhood. I wonder what we would have left. Certainly we build our structures to withstand 150 mph winds (as the Bahamians did) but I doubt many would pay the difference to build to withstand 185 – 200 mph winds and the associated water of a storm like this.
Perhaps we should do as the Prime Minister said: “We can pray.” And so, I pray: O Lord, I do not pray that you will keep me safe and just save those poor people. I pray that you will not leave our hearts alone until we get actively involved in helping people in the Bahamas who now have no homes, family members lost or deceased, and people wondering about their own existence. Help us reach out the hand of compassion and mercy to help our brothers and sisters. Amen.
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The Journey 