By Jeff Christian
The waters of the most devastating rainfall in United States history had yet to recede before the blasphemy began. Armchair preachers decided it was time to speak, when in reality the better choice would have been to keep silent. “Hurricane Harvey was God’s way of rebuking the sinners,” was one such blasphemy shot into cyberspace like an unaimed shotgun.
I thought about such ungodly observations while many of our church helped clean out the house of one of our families who lost just about everything in the floods. Mind you, this household is a household of prayer, of Christlike hospitality, a place that continually seeks God’s will and shares the joy of the Lord. Many of us have prayed in that house. Sang in that house. Danced in that house. Raised glasses of cheer because we are loved, and because we love.
Granted, none of us are without sin. We know that. But we also know that the Lord of all creation sustains us in ways well beyond our earthly understandings. Like Elijah in 1 Kings 19 who experienced God, we too experienced God in a gentle whisper after the storm.
Each hug in the long lines at the grocery store was God’s gentle whisper.
Every time we carried waterlogged furniture into the front yard was the sound of God’s gentle whisper.
Every donation, every bottle of water, every time someone asked, “How can I help?” were all the places that God showed up and proclaimed, “I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth.”
These were the works of God. These continue to be the moments when love remains, when it is better for us to proclaim God’s presence, not in the storm, but in the gentle whisper that comes after.
