Good morning…
Traveling to a weekend gathering with our small group from church, we drove down to south Georgia the day after treacherous storms. I snapped a crappy photo out the window as the traffic inched through a section of road where trees on both sides of the road were mangled, ripped up, stripped bare, toppled. A large team of people were still clearing the road of debris. Had a tornado wreaked this havoc? My phone automatically recorded the location: LaGrange.
Now in the middle of the night I open an email from our Disaster Response team from church. “Tornados in Georgia” is the heading I read.
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Team,
You have likely heard that several tornado’s cut through Georgia last night. We may be asked to serve areas that were hit. From what I have learned today, it would most likely be the LaGrange, GA area.
If we are called we will do day trips with the focus being chainsaw work, debris removal and potential roof tarping. You don’t have to be chainsaw certified to pull the debris.
Stand by, I’ll keep you informed and let you know if we are called to serve.
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LaGrange. Let’s all lift prayers for our neighbors in LaGrange, Georgia as well as those devastated by the tornados ripping through the state of Alabama, stealing lives and causing immense damage. If you are interested in serving with our Disaster Response team as we are sent out from Northside Church, please let me know and I will share with you the information I receive over the coming days.
In a homily I shared last week at our staff worship service at church, I shared, “I have heard it said, ‘We don’t come to church, we come to worship God then we go out to be the church.'” I see us doing just that. In many significant ways, we are going out to be the church.
We are gathering in small groups to grow lives of faith together.
We are lifting prayers of hope and healing for those devastated by life’s treacherous storms.
We are ready to help our neighbors in hands-on ways when disaster mangles, rips up, strips bare, and topples the lives of ordinary people.
Once the commitment is clear, you do what you can, not what you can’t. The heart regulates the hands. This isn’t so others can take it easy while you sweat it out. No, you’re shoulder to shoulder with them all the way, your surplus matching their deficit, their surplus matching your deficit. In the end you come out even. As it is written: Nothing left over to the one with the most, Nothing lacking to the one with the least (2 Corinthians 8:12-15, MSG).
What a great embodiment of God’s church at its best.
…Sue…
