The week after we moved it rained pretty much solid every day, thus resulting in many flooded areas, so last week found me helping a dear friend Jamie in Ephrata, whose house and possessions were pretty much annihilated in the flood. Was so devastating to drive her street and observe heartbroken homeowners tossing to the street side the remains of the lives they invested an abundance of energy, time and resouces into building for themselves and their loved ones. Soggy, grimy, sludgy, sewer and mud covered artifacts that once were pieces of their lives, heirlooms, everday necesseties, cherished gifts, memories, and keepsakes, lay in limp, saddened dissaray, waiting the arrival of a dumpster to carry them away to landfill graves. It's a heartbreaking realization to look at your home and discover an empty studded shell, to face the fact of the life you knew and loved is swept away in an afternoon to raging, angry, swirling flood waters, leaving you with the overwhelming job of starting over with nothing. The emotional flood of loss is huge, but it doesn't stop there, you are then frantically thrown into a whirlpool of decisions, where do we live, what do we keep, where do we start, who do we trust and the mind hits overload and never stops. And we as friends and volunteers can't do much of anything, but come along side, be a shoulder, share the tears, give a meal, show them love.
Processing in my mind the devastation I had seen and watching these dear people numbly going about cleaning up the after math of such a tragedy, i had to think about my Saviour and how He must feel when so often floods of busyness, and daily needs of our family, and pleasures for ourselves cause us to carelessly, at times flippantly , toss him to the street side, to nonchalantly go on our way without a backwards glance, without a second thought of the horror and tragedy He faced to give us Life abundantly. I wonder how often I leave Him standing dejectedly on the sidelines, shaking His head, whispering, come back, take my hand, I walked this path before you, without Me you won't stand a chance against the whirlpools of this world, waiting to pull you in, drag you down. So often we wait until were up to our eyeballs in sludge and debris, then finally remember we have the ultimate Rescue worker, waiting patiently in the sidelines for us to come to a realization that without Him, we can do nothing, be nothing, we are an empty shell only Christ and His love can fill! Only Christ can turn this dumpster deserving soul into Pure Gold!!
