Pending Session approval, there will be offering plates and our wooden offering box available for donations – you can designate your gift to one of the above “funds” – or just for “Hurricane Relief” and we will send it on.  Checks for any amount made out to Beulah Presbyterian Church will then be credited to your giving statement.  You can also donate online on the PCUSA website using the link listed above, and consider a time of volunteer mission service.  

 

Sometime after our initial response of disbelief and sadness, coupled with a desire to do something to help, we may then move to ask the deeper theological questions: “Why?”  “Why do these things happen?”  “How do we believe in a loving God that would allow these tragic events so occur?”   

 

These are worthy questions for us to ponder - Christians and believers of all faith traditions have pondered them for centuries.  This is what theology is all about - pondering our knowledge of God and ourselves and the relationship between us and God. 

In these questions I try to hold two thoughts or “texts” in mind.  One is a prayer from our Book of Common Prayer, with the title “When There Is a Natural Disaster:” 

God of earthquake, wind, and fire,

tame natural forces that defy control,

or shock us by their fury.

Keep us from calling disaster your justice;

and help us, in good times or in calamity,

to trust your mercy which never ends,

and your power,

which in Jesus Christ stilled storms,

raised the dead,

and put down demonic powers. Amen.

The prayer asks God directly to “tame natural forces” – so we pray that the hurricane, now past, would be tamed.  Perhaps this particular storm was tamed a bit: as it neared the shore it was a category 5 storm, and was then downgraded a bit to a category 4. Would that God had tamed it some more.   

More important to me however, is the second sentence of this prayer:  “Keep us from calling (natural) disaster your judgment, and help us… to trust your mercy….”  Such events are not God’s will or God’s desire – and they are certainly not God’s judgment on these people, or on gambling, or the sometimes wild side of the French Quarter of New Orleans.  (I am, however, wondering if some fundamentalist, Pat-Robertson-type will soon be saying that it is!) 

 

The second text I hold in mind in the face of these troubling matters is from Romans, Chapter 8 – a chapter which I have said before is perhaps the most important chapter in the whole Bible, and a summary of what we really need to know and hope for:  

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.  For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  

 

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:18-25) 

With this text from Paul, I also hold on to the second to last chapter of Revelation, the goal of the creation itself, what God and all of us together are working toward:  

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them;  he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”  And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new."          Revelation 21:1-5a

I hold this prayer and these texts close to my mind, and my heart, in tragic times like these, when natural disasters come.  The creation itself is groaning in labor pains – in travail – and I see these natural disasters as part of the labor pains, the groaning of the created order – waiting until the new heaven and new earth comes forth. 

In the meantime there is shock and grief, and despair.  And we can help. 

Hoping to worship with you, to pray together with you this Sunday for all of these people and places, to celebrate with you the baptism of Phillip James Schmidlapp, son of Hope and Rob Schmidlapp, grandson of Terry and Jim Watson – and to share the communion meal together around the Lord’s Table with you (at this the last of our 10:00 summer schedule worship services) – and hoping and praying for safe travel for those of you who are traveling on this last holiday weekend of the summer, I remain, always 

 

Yours in Christ,

Ken Hockenberry

Pastor