Hurricane Katrina- what's next?

In all the years I've been writing the basicmessage, I don't think I've ever written a second message in a week. This week is an exception due to Hurricane Katrina. The message from last Sunday was about Katrina, and I'm going to leave it up on the website for now, in addition to the new message.

We live northwest of New Orleans, and we got plenty of high winds and rain. At times it was a frightening experience, but after everything is said and done, I must say: "Thank you, Lord". People who have no faith in God see life as a series of coincidences. Everything can be explained through some sort of scientific approach. I look back on Monday and see the hand of God throughout the day. It really began Sunday night when the weather report showed we would have winds up to 60-70 miles per hour. I don't think that ever happened, and we got a good night's sleep, and were blessed to have a nice breakfast Monday morning before the power went out. Thank you, Lord. The next blessing was that the storm arrived after daylight. This might not sound like much, but being able to look out of the window and see what's going on versus hearing all sorts of weird sounds at night makes a big difference. Thank you, Lord. My two adult children stayed with us and had their cars parked in the yard. There wasn't a scratch on any of them. Thank you, Lord. We live in an area with giant pine trees. These trees are probably 80 feet tall, so you can imagine how much velocity they can develop while falling. At one point we heard a loud "pop" and started running for the other end of the house. After we were able to go outside and survey the damage, we found not one, but two trees that fell within a few inches of our house. In fact, one tree barely scraped the side of the house. It was almost as if God was saying, "look how close I can make a tree fall". Thank you, Lord. After looking over all of the trees that fell, it was like they had been directed in precisely how to fall without hitting anything valuable. My little John Deere tractor's plastic hood was broken, but the tractor still ran fine and was used non-stop for 2 serious days of cleanup. Thank you, Lord. I have an old generator that I figured I'd have to work on before using, but I put gas in it and it cranked on the 2nd pull. Thank you, Lord. With the widespread damage, we didn't know when the power would be restored. It was out for 60 hours, which wasn't too bad considering. While I still "Thank you, Lord", I also thank the Lord for bringing over power crews from neighboring states. Some folks from the Houston area helped us. Whoever you guys are in the red trucks, thank you.

As you can see, I'm appreciative for what God has done for us. Does that mean that the people whose homes were destroyed were bad people? Of course not. During times like this we see the good and bad side of people. While sitting in a line at the gas station this morning, I chatted with a man who wanted to volunteer his boat and his time to help with the rescue efforts. I asked if I could give him some gas for his trip, and he simply said, "No, that's okay, I can come back for more". Sadly, fear has overtaken many people who have decided to hoard gasoline. Some people are hauling 55 gallon drums in pickup trucks to the gas station to fill up. While they have the right to buy as much gas as they want, it's inconsiderate to make other people wait in long lines due to the slow filling of a drum. I wonder if any of them have considered just how bad it would be if they had an accident with a huge drum of gas in the back of their truck. Burned to death for a few extra tanks of gas. Go figure.

The latest fear in Baton Rouge is that we'll be inundated by lawless hoodlums from New Orleans. There is plenty of talk about guns and so on, and that makes me more scared of our own citizens than the potential criminal element. If we start looking at every refugee as a criminal, we're not getting off to a good start in helping them. We're also hearing that the population of Baton Rouge has doubled in the past 2 days from people coming into town. There is a growing anxiety about how we will be inconvenienced. So much for us being gracious hosts to people in need.

We'll really get to see what we're made of in the coming weeks. Are we true Christians that really want to help people in need? Or perhaps we want to help people as long as we aren't put-out any. There's a Bible story about giving out of excess versus digging deep in pockets that don't hold much already.

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others."

Jesus is giving us an ideal opportunity to show some of the Christian love we talk about on Sunday morning. Make no mistake, he's watching our every move. What will he record about you?