About two weeks after a massive tornado cut a swathe through Moore, Oklahoma, Daniel and I took a team from our church down to help with relief.
We essentially walked around until we found homeowners who were digging through the ruins of their homes–and asked if they needed help with anything.
Different people had different requests.
Daniel and I stopped first at a home where a woman was digging about for anything that might be salvageable. Helping was difficult, because we really didn’t know what she wanted or didn’t want. What was important to her? What did she consider worth saving? We didn’t know, so we busied ourselves with moving bricks and beams and broken furniture, piling up anything that was at all intact for her to sort through. Once she started looking herself, it became apparent that the items she cared about the most were DVDs.
Her next door neighbor stood outside her house, unsure of what to do. This second homeowner, unlike her neighbor, understood that insurance would cover ruined belongings. She wasn’t interested in searching for this item or that. Her daughter (in the elementary school that was devastated) was out of the hospital. Her sons were safe.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t have a request for us.
Her mother was worried that the church people might show up and see the couple dozen trash bags worth of beer cans now strewn across the property. What would they think? Her Christian reputation would be ruined if they could see that evidence of how much she drinks. Would we help?
Two friends held open trash bags as Daniel and I shoveled beer cans as fast as we could. We filled the bed of a pickup truck. They’d be able to recycle them for some cash.
When we met up with some others of our group, they had a different story to share.
A family was searching for an heirloom–a family Bible full of underlinings and notes, with leaves outlining births and deaths and baptisms. Our team searched with them, digging through the remains of their lives.
A Bible was found, was brought to the homeowner. The homeowner opened it, confirmed that this was indeed the Bible. The couple dropped what they were doing, called off the team.
That was it. The rest could be bulldozed. Nothing else mattered.
They circled the team for a prayer of thankfulness before they headed back to their temporary housing.
“Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.”
I Corinthians 3:12-13 (KJV)
Before the Day stands these lowercase days, days when wind–not fire–exposes our hearts. Are we set on the entertainments of this world? Are we building merely a facade to hide our sin? Or will the wind expose a life that sets its hope in the eternal?
I pray that the Day…and every lowercase day…will find me building with gold, searching for silver, storing up precious stones.
What a loss, if the wind should come and all I be left with is wood, hay, and rubble.
Fascinating. I can identify with the THREAT of losing everything, but knowing that I didn’t actually have to start completely over. It IS interesting to see what becomes most important to you during those times. It exposes the heart. Big time.
Powerful and convicting!
Thank you, first of all, for being the hands and feet of Jesus in Oklahoma. And even more, thank you for sharing this story and making it carry such a strong spiritual punch. I continually need reminders of what’s truly important in the eyes of God.