God is Our Comfort

       We've had quite a week around here with water everywhere.  It's Spring and the Red River is flooding; at least it is trying to be Spring.  Monday it was 60 degrees and warm and sunny.  People were out in shorts running and biking.  I know I enjoyed going out without my jacket.  It was great while it lasted.
       But yesterday, we woke up to some snow on the ground and then it kept snowing all day long.  I went out before my afternoon bible-study and had to dig to find the scraper so I could get the snow off of the car so I could see to drive.  By late afternoon, it looked more like Christmas outside than getting close to Easter.
       It would be one thing if all of this was just a matter of inconvenience or disappointment in the weather change, but the flooding makes it more serious.  No matter how often we have lived through floods in the past, as I was reminded more than once this week, every flood is different and when they hit such high levels, they bring disaster.  There is damage to houses, roads covered by water isolating small towns and rural homesteads, farm animals and wildlife are displaced, and even those of us who are safe are on edge and watchful.
      In the midst of this, neighbors are reaching out to each other and helping each other out from the filling and piling of sandbags to feeding cattle that have wandered away trying to escape water.  After the rivers start returning to their banks, there will be the hard work of cleaning up inside and out so that life can begin to return to normal.  We'll need to help each other out then as well.
       There is a communal aspect to disaster that sometimes makes it easier to reach out to help one another or to ask for help.  When disaster strikes a community (or a large river valley), being affected by the disaster becomes something we have in common to a lesser or greater extent.  The shared experience makes it harder to judge the circumstances as the result of personal fault.  We find ourselves in the same predicament.
       Once after a tornado devastated a small town, I went to the only place in town for a hot meal which was the Salvation Army setup.  I found myself standing in line with the mayor and asked him how he was.  It had been a very hard and busy two or three days since the tornado.  He suddenly stopped and looked around and said, "It's really true.  I just realized I'm here in the soup line with everyone else.  I lost my house too."
       But no matter what has happened, we do not face it alone.  Before, during, and after any disaster or crisis, God is with us.  As it is written, "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you." (Isaiah 43:1-2)  God loves and knows you by name and calls you in love.  When we feel alone, it is because we have turned away and lost sight of God who is always there, ready and wanting to hold us in love.  Read Isaiah 66:12-13