Caroline, one of the girls in my group, shared about two people, Keith & Michelle, we met while down there. She sums up their story very well. If you have six minutes and some speakers, take a listen.
Our home base for the entire week was The First United Methodist Church of Pass Christian. All the girls from our group were staying there. A great guy by the name of Mike Zimmerman had come down from the Mercy Center in North Carolina to lead, and most of all organize, a variety of projects for the stream of groups that would be helping in Pass Christian. Now this was a small church to start with, but luckily the Lord spared it from the worst of the storm. It had only two feet of water inside during the hurricane, and that may sound like a lot but compared to everywhere else that was the least amount of water I heard about. All of the walls, including the interior ones, were made of cinderblock, so besides having the carpeting pulled up, half the pews and everything in the extra rooms destroyed, it was a working church. But because there are so few people who are living in Pass Christian, now the already small church only had a handful of parishioners showing up for sunday services. So it was about a dozen locals and 80 of us from Wilmore on sunday morning.
And it really got to me. Seeing the locals who had been through so much, having virtually everything they owed destroyed, still there praising God, its was truly something and brought a tear to my eye. The songs were good, and there were ones I had sung so many times before, but I saw them in a new light. “On God the solid rock I stand”, has such a literal meaning and makes Matthew 7:24-27 more than a parable. “It is well with my soul” cause it sure ain’t well with my house. To believe that “great is thy faithfulness” when you look outside and couldn’t really object to a non-believer thinking “how can God be good if He let this happen?” Truly amazing and reminded me of a similar reaction I had this past Easter. Commonplace songs breaking through the monotony of routine.
Thursday morning, being Thanksgiving, we had another service. It was in the next town over, Long Beach, were the destruction was even worse. To illustrate my point, we drove by a sign for a “Kangaroo” (how the sign was still there I don’t know) but someone in my van asked what’s a Kangaroo? It was destroyed so bad we couldn’t even tell it was a gas station.
After the service we were ready to get started. There is something about meeting the people who’s town you are going to be helping. It pushed me over the edge and not made me willing to “just take it easy before tomorrow”.
As for the work on sunday (which the trip was not about, something you’ll hear more about later)? The one time I needed the measuring tape I brought, I didn’t have it with me. I built some shelves at a distribution center and got eaten alive but what we would soon dub “F’ing Gnats”. Did anyone knew gnats bite? Well I sure didn’t, but I did end up finding the big dipper on my arm.
We were at the ol Wal-Mart. Looking to pick up some items that would make a good little dinner, and we were fancying some brownies for dessert. While we were there deciding if we wanted double chocolate chunk brownies, or deluxe fudge brownies, or brownies with frosting or maybe just get the cheap ones of on the bottom shelf, I realized that this is a uniquely prosperous problem. That was our big dilemma for the night; which pre-packaged, just add eggs, oil and milk brownies to buy for dessert. There we were, standing and staring at a wall of brownies, 3 six footers looking from our toes to over our head at brownies. At this point I realized there are countries that don’t have huge mega stores like Wal-Mart selling a 100 of everything. Even other well off countries don’t have the kind of insane selection that we do here in America. We get used to being the most prosperous country in the world. Then I went on to realize that there are people all around the world who haven’t had a brownie before. Even more then that, there are a billion people who are just lucky if they have something to eat tonight
Now, we bought some kind of brownie, I don’t remember which, but it was darn tasty. I’m not planning on giving up desserts anytime soon. But the G8 Summit and the Live8 concert, have really brought the situation to the forefront of everyone’s mind, lets remember those who haven’t been as blessed as we have. Be thankful for what you have, don’t complain about what you want.
With the extra time available to me not having to work due to the Christmas holiday I have had some great time to do things such as read. So I opened up “The Pursuit of God” by A.W. Tozer, the chapter I am on is titled “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing” . “Ah oh” I thought to myself, “this isn’t going to be fun”, which traditionally in these types of matters means, “this will be good for me”. Tozer starts out that before sin God gave Adam all sorts of gifts, and it was good, but now, in the post-fallen world these “things” can cause problems. We cling to them. The words me and mine “are verbal symptoms of our deep disease”. I find it interesting that it is now the day after Christmas, where we rejoice because of the piles of things we have just received. Today, definitely doesn’t help to cure this disease. Just as God’s gifts to Adam were blessings, having things/gifts isn’t bad, the problem comes when we try to possess these things.
I was watching one of Christmas gifts and on it Jerry Seinfield said in one of his interspersed standup bits that he has had stuff stolen from his apartment several times. The first time was the worse, a “they took my stuff” attitude. But after that you don’t even bother calling the cops about it. I think we have to get to that point. Abraham had to learn that lesson a very hard way, he had to be willing to sacrifice his son in order to obey God. Afterwards Isaac was safe and Abraham had a wife, a son, sheep, camels, and descendants as numerous as the stars. “He had everything,
but he possessed nothing.” Everything we have is on loan from God. Tozer has a great suggestion for when his readers begin to examine themselves on this issue, I think it’s a great suggestion for whenever we examine anything before God: we “should put away all defense” and not resort to excuses. That really hit home for me, because I immediately want to make defenses when being confronted.
I think a former pastor of mine, expressed the attitude our hearts need to have in regards to stuff very well when he said something along the lines: we need to let things rest in the palm of our hands, making them easy to remove not trying to hold them tightly with our fingers clinched around them. Then it won’t be so bad if they are taken away, at least they weren’t ripped out of our hands and heart.
In our “Top of the Week” meeting at work this week, we had a little devo as we do every week. The conversation lead to a discussion about, the fully divine, Jesus as a Child. How much did he know and how much did he realize about who he is early on in this earthly life? Such as, God trapped as a helpless embro, was it just torture, once being able to do anything at all, and self-limited only to kick on occasion? Or did he grow into his realization as the Son of God and Savior of the universe as he got older? He did obvously know who he was when he was 12 and his family lost him back at the temple ?Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?? (Luke 2:49)
The discussion reminded me of a song: “I Celebrate The Day” by “Relient K” that asks that same question. And I think expresses it better then I just did in the previous paragraph:
And the first time
That You opened Your eyes did You realize that You would be my Savior?
And the first breath that left Your lips
Did You know that it would change this world forever?
