Sunday, May 6, 2007

In the last two days, I’ve tried to get chicken nuggets out of the ice cube trays, fished for a drinking glass in the coffee filter drawer, and stopped at a green light. This is in addition to multiply losing my train of thought, going through more Puffs Plus with Aloe than in a normal cold and flu season, and being unable to stop my brain long enough to sleep – even when it’s two in the morning.

No, it’s not early onset Alzheimer’s. It’s…shock? As mentioned in the two posts below, my sister Lori and her family lost their home, their church, and their entire town Friday night when the now-famous tornado ripped through Greensburg, Kansas. Greensburg. A Mayberry-esque town that my sister always credited with being the place no one knew. She was more than a little shocked when I told her yesterday that it was on Fox…CNN…MSNBC…all the channels.

When my Dad called Friday night to tell me that there had been a tornado, everyone in her household was okay, but the house and church were gone, I was true to my Bekah-fashion and completely freaked out. Full fledged freaking – complete with hyperventilating, crying, and pacing. That news was bad enough, but to “wake up” Saturday morning…did I ever go to bed Friday night?...and see the daylight footage of the storm’s aftermath put devastation in a whole new category. Recovering from home and church loss is one thing. Recovering from town loss is quite another.

I forced myself to occasionally get up from the couch yesterday…to mow the yard…to do laundry…to clean the house…to have coffee with Marie…to watch a movie…things that needed to be done more than CNN needed to be watched. And yet while I mowed or cleaned or did laundry, I felt just a bit guilty that I had a yard to mow…a house to clean…and clothes to wash…when more miles away than I can get to, my own family is without all of it. And not just my own family, but family after family.

And this morning, about 12:30, I was cleaning and exercising and making the bed, knowing how ridiculous it is to be doing all those things at midnight when church is just hours away, but the thought of going to bed was nauseating. Who can sleep? So I was on the phone trying to sort out my feelings once more, and finding myself as confused when I hung up as I had been at the start of the conversation.

And this is just me. This is just a fraction of what my sister, my brother-in-law, my niece, all of Greensburg must be feeling. Fortunately for Lori, (and for those around her) she is a much stronger person than I am. I cry at Burger King commercials. She holds it together in a tornado. How again are we related?

This morning I was working my way through the purse-sized Kleenex collection during the morning worship service, wondering why I’d settled on my traditional second row seat. That’s all people needed…a mascara-losing Bekah in the second row, hiccupping through songs.

But we sang the worship chorus How great is our God…How great is our God…And all will see how great, how great is our God. It’s hard to know what to hope for in a situation like this. You hope that the death toll doesn’t even climb even by one more. You hope that the storms that are thinking about forming in the sky above Greensburg just stop thinking and go away. You hope that your family can just hurry up and get back to what’s left of their home and find a picture or an heirloom or even just a pillow. You hope that aid pours in to help replace and rebuild. Those have been my hopes for the last couple of days. But singing that song this morning put in me a very deep hope that the greatness of God will be seen in the aftermath of this storm.

I hope that as people watch my family dig through their basement for whatever they can find, they’ll see a Perfect Peace hovering over that property. I hope that as my family reaches out to help their friends and neighbors – because that’s just the kind of people they are – that those friends and neighbors will see a Great God at work. And I hope as that entire community sifts through the leftovers of nature’s mighty work, they’ll see God’s mighty work in progress woven through it all.

Just a couple of days ago, I was praying Psalm 46:10 over someone. That verse says “Be still, and know that I am God.” There’s a very powerful comma in that sentence. Be still…and know that I am God. Before you can ,know or do anything, you first have to be still. Quit fighting. Quit shaking. Quit flailing. Just be still. And once you’re still, you can know that He is God. He will be exalted among the nations and in the earth, the verse goes on to say. Be still…He is God.

As I stood in church this morning and sang (okay, mouthed) about God’s greatness and thought about Psalm 46:10, I experienced that stillness. I stopped crying for a minute, stopped feeling sick, and just allowed myself to be still. And it was then that I comprehended the words to the song and began to pray that message over my sister, my brother-in-law, my niece, and the whole community around them.

The beginning of Psalm 46 says, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.” Well there might not be mountains and a sea in Greensburg, Kansas, but the earth has given way, trouble has come, and there has certainly been quaking and surging. But God is there within the tragedy, and He will be their help, refuge, and strength. And He can teach them how to be still…and know that He is God.

And for those of us hundreds of miles back this way who can only pace and watch the news, He can do the same.