Flooding in Queensland

Sometimes, when you are swimming, you take a deep breath, push off from the end of the pool and kick just to see how far you can get across the pool without coming up for air.  At some point, the necessity for air and the arrival of fear cross paths.  The reality of the situation is you will make it through, but there is just that short fragment of doubt that perhaps you've dived too far and you won't be able to get that next breath.  The longer you go, the more the fear.  That tightening of the chest; the coursing of adrenalin feels like electricity shooting through the arteries from your heart.  Fear causes flailing - anything to breathe again.  But you've been working so hard, so tired, it would now be so easy to quit...

I can sense that in Queensland today.  As we watched the TV for news updates and as we received and sent calls to neighbors and friends in the area, massive amounts of fear course through the heartland of the Lockyer Valley.  Dumbstruck faces, THE question, "When will this end?" It started raining last week sometime and it finally broke sometime in the middle of the night.  So as we watch updates wanting to cover our eyes, we know that this newest flood has a chance of pulling us all under.  Fear will cause us to flail; even though we've been working so hard, so tired, it would be very easy to quit...

Many of the small towns surrounding Gatton were flooded even worse than 2011.  Although the death toll, thankfully, is much less, property damage will reach or even be worse than two years ago.  We live on a hill in Gatton so we have not been physically affected by this flood (yet) but as part of the corporate community, once the waters go down, we'll be out and about with those who have lost.  My guess is that people will have lost much property but they will also have seen something else float away:

Hope.

Already, silently, squirreled away in the shock and numbness of the newest raging torrent, is the question, "How will we rebuild, again?  Can we rebuild, again?  Will this happen, again?  What's the point?"  Perhaps my job will be even more important not necessarily to be a counselor, or even a prayer, or even a man who cares deeply for the lives of God's children, but my role may be to help people surface to breathe in hope.  It may take much longer this time; the residual effects of this flood will interminably hang on.  Sweeping out the water and mud, cleaning garbage from the fence posts and washing the sediment from shop floors - the task of humanity is once again to band together and stand with each other as we resurface.

There is no moral of my blog today.  It feels like the morality of the storm wiped clean any kitchy platitudes to tie up the end.  I leave you with this; from Romans 5 - it was (is) our theme for the school year that will now (hopefully) begin tomorrow.

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.  And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.  Not only so, but we also rejoice (this does not mean being happy about suffering, but believing that God will lead us through) our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.  And hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

Please pray for all those affected by the Queensland floods.  Write, call, text to your loved ones; encourage them find ways to offer hope - again.