Today's Devotional

September 26, 2005

Subject:  Churches Doing What Churches Do

Matthew 25:35 - "For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in."

With the threat of the third most intense hurricane ever bearing upon Southeast Texas, I hit the road to get my daughters out of harm's way and then I returned to weather the storm with my parents.  On my way back home, I got a call from my brother asking that I get back in a hurry and bring any food that I could find.  I searched in a few cities as I drove back only to find that most stores were out of food.  Pretty amazing.  When I got back, I was overwhelmed by the helplessness of other evacuees stranded on a major thoroughfare directly behind my parent's house.  My brother had opened up the community center on our church property and it was filling quickly.  Most of the people were simply tired of being on the highway as many talked about driving 5 or 10 miles in as many hours.  Gas stations were running out of fuel and businesses were closing.  Many people were now stranded on roadways throughout Texas as they escaped the looming wrath of Hurricane Rita in all directions.  

At this point I was going on about 2 hours of sleep in the last 36 hours, but when I finally got home and saw the people and their condition, I gained new energy as my brother and I began to run a mini "Hotel Rwanda" for 2 days.  The first night we gathered all of the people together and we organized them with responsibilities for cleaning, cooking, scheduling bathroom use and sharing food when necessary.  In the end I think we had between 150 to 200 people with lots of children.  The people were really grateful and we thanked God that we could help.  

I heard one reporter on the news make the quote that, "while FEMA, the Red Cross and many other relief agencies are getting caught in their own red tape, churches are out there doing what churches do."  That made me happy because I believe that's exactly what churches should do.  When everyone else is saying, we need you to fill out these forms and we need to know who you are and where you came from, the church should simply have its hand out to help people in need.   

After day one, we heard that the Red Cross was finally set up in the gymnasium facility in our hometown and we turned our patrons over to them.  We didn't have the wherewithal to support that many people for more than a couple of days, but we were there when they needed a place to rest and something to eat.   There were a million reasons not to help, after all we had hurricane preparations to do ourselves and we didn't know these people anyway.  While that may be true, God didn't create the church to retreat from the world to provide our own safety.  Instead He put us in this world to reach out to the hurting and the lost.  That's what churches do.

Carlen