©2005 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

09-04-05

Hurricane Survival

9/4/05 Hurricane Survival

I had planned to continue with our study of Ephesians 6 this morning,

looking at a remarkable piece

of that protective armor given to us by our God - our shield of faith.

I even put some thoughts down on paper

in preparation for the morning.

But following the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina,

and the ongoing impact it is having throughout our nation,

I decided to pull out of our Ephesians study for a week

and spend this morning reminding us

of some truths we can so easily loose sight of

in our daily routines of life.

Of course the news media this past week

has been flooded with reports and images

from the devastation left behind by the hurricane,

but unless you had family or friends

who were directly affected by the storm,

apart from the now soaring gas prices,

those of us who live in Alaska

might appear to be far removed from what has happened in the south.

Our lives have not been disrupted.

Our homes are not flooded.

Our gas is refined just a few miles down the road,

guaranteeing uninterrupted supply.

We had several beautiful early fall days this past week,

and the scattering of gold in the trees

tells us that we are once again moving into

what is certainly the most intensely beautiful few weeks of the entire year.

But the truth is

that even though our life here in the far north

has not been physically affected by that hurricane,

we have been deeply affected mentally and emotionally.

It is impossible to see the images

of an entire city submerged in water,

knowing the kind of loss it will bring to hundreds of thousands of people,

without those images causing turmoil inside us.

And in a subtle

but powerful way

a tragedy of this nature

shakes the pillars upon which our lives are constructed.

We all have those pillars, you know -

foundations upon which we build our lives,

assumptions we rarely think about consciously,

yet assumptions upon which every one of our choices and decisions depend.

One of those pillars for most of us

is the reasonable predictability of our lives.

Of course none of us know the future,

but we all bring to each day

reasonable assumptions about what that day, and the next day, and the next will be like.

And anything that brings about disruption in those assumptions

will generate stress in our lives.

We also build our lives upon another pillar -

the belief that we have both the right and the ability

to have significant control over our own lives.

We make choices

believing that those choices will improve the quality of our lives

either today

or at some point in the future.

Another pillar of our lives

involves our expectations of the people around us.

We assume that the people we interact with each day

will keep their conduct within certain reasonable,

socially acceptable boundaries.

When we get into our cars and head down K Beach Road

we expect our fellow drivers coming the opposite direction

to keep their cars on the other side of that thin yellow line.

When we walk into Fred Meyers and get in line with our loaf of bread

we assume the fellow in line behind us

will not pull out a pistol and blow us away

simply because he doesn’t want to wait for us to check out.

And when thousands of people are crammed into the temporary shelters

following a devastating hurricane

those people have the expectation

that their fellow refugees will not rape and rob them.

Such assumptions about life are reasonable.

In fact,

if such assumptions were not in place within us,

we would approach every day we lived

with a tremendous fear and anxiety,

having no idea what was coming

and feeling helpless in our ability to influence the events in our lives.

But then something like Katrina takes place

and, even for those of us who were not there,

and whose lives have only been indirectly affected by the tragedy,

those pillars within us shake,

maybe even crumble.

And then there is another pillar within us

that has been attacked as well.

It is the one that matters most,

yet the one we most rarely openly acknowledge.

It is, in fact, the one we’ve been talking a lot about recently

as we’ve moved through this study of Ephesians.

It is the one that forms the central target

in all of Satan’s attacks against each of us

from the day we enter this world.

It is our understanding of the absolute goodness of God.

Where was God when that hurricane hit

and why, if He is really a God of love,

didn’t He stop it?

In fact, I received a phone call this past week

in which I was asked that very question.

(I must admit I was a little surprised

that the caller considered me qualified to speak for God.

That’s very high praise indeed!)

But even though most of us

don’t come right out and ask the question,

just as Satan actively, aggressively seeks

to bring into each of our lives on an individual basis

wounds that will cause us to question and doubt God’s love for us,

so, when a tragedy like this happens,

he uses it as a weapon with which to wound the entire nation,

bringing up the same question on a national level,

“How could a God of love allow this to happen?”

And some of the comments I hear coming out of the Christian community

when something like this happens

are sometimes more terrifying to me

than even what I hear from the secular media.

I heard a report this past week

of a prominent Christian personality

who was reported to have said that whenever the U.S. forces Israel to give up some of their land,

as they have done in these most recent Middle East events,

he has noticed that the U.S. then experiences a major natural disaster.

Such comments show such a sick, twisted perception of God.

What the man is really saying is that,

since political leaders in Washington D.C. made certain decisions concerning Israel,

God responded to their choices

by bringing about tremendous loss and suffering

in the lives of some of the poorest and most needy people in Louisiana.

If that were true,

it would mean first of all

that the death of Christ really didn’t atone for our sins completely,

that God is still bringing a measure of vengeance and condemnation on us as well,

and that He thinks nothing of requiring one person to suffer

for another person’s sins.

Apparently this man’s “God” really doesn’t care who suffers,

so long as someone does.

And then we wonder why,

when we as Christians speak to our society,

we seem to have so little credibility.

But let me get back on track here.

What I’d like to do this morning

is to offer just a few thoughts

that will, I hope, be of value in our trying to understand

what has happened in our nation this past week.

And I’d like to begin with an observation

about where responsibility for this disaster lies.

And to do this

I need to put my comments

into the correct doctrinal setting.

This world we currently live in

is not precisely as God first created it for us.

The best single statement I could offer you from Scripture

for what I want to say here

is found in Romans 8:18-22.

In that passage Paul says,

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

OK, he begins by saying simply,

we know that there is a better world coming,

and one whose glory

will make the sufferings of this present time seem as nothing by comparison.

But then he goes on

to talk specifically about the physical creation as it now exists.

For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.

He tells us that,

just as we Christians

eagerly wait for the return of Christ

and the time when He will restore proper order to the human race,

so the physical world also longs for that time.

And then he explains why.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.

He is telling us that,

when man sinned,

it brought about consequences

not just in the human race,

but in the physical world as well.

He describes it as a “futility “ and a “slavery to corruption”,

and then uses an analogy that every mother will understand.

He says it is as if the entire physical world

“groans and suffers the pains of childbirth”.

I describe it to myself as an agonizing tension within the physical world,

a tension that expresses itself

in all those things in the physical world

that are not as God originally created them to be.

It includes everything from mosquitos,

to weeds,

to animals eating animals,

to tornados, and floods, and earthquakes, and scorching heat, and Hurricane Katrina.

All of these things

are part of the world in which we currently live.

All of them have existed since sin entered our world.

God is not creating new forms of tension within nature

and then springing them on us.

Nor does one section of the world get them all,

while other sections avoid them all.

From earliest days of our Nation’s existence

we have known that the southeast coast of the U.S. is vulnerable to hurricanes

just as we know that our own region is vulnerable to earthquakes

and extreme cold.

I was talking with a Jr. High student this past week

about the situation in New Orleans

and he wanted to know what happened.

I said,

“Well, the city was built entirely below sea level

in a coastal region of the world where hurricanes are common.”

Do you know what he said?

“Well, that was stupid!”

And he was right.

But that was man’s choice.

Not one specific man, of course,

but many men and women over several hundred years.

But it was not God’s choice that put the city where it was,

it was man’s.

On the Coast Guard Base where my daughter, son-in-law, and grandson live

there is one section of the base

with a gate across it.

Beyond that gate is a road that leads down

to a firing range where the recruits regularly practice

with their rifles and sidearms.

There is also a Day Care facility on this base.

It is located a long distance away from that firing range.

Building the City of New Orleans below sea level

on a hurricane-prone coast

and then saying that,

if God is really a God of love

He will protect the city from hurricanes

is like building that Day Care facility

on that firing range

and then saying that,

if God is really a God of love

He will protect those children from being hit.

Now, I am certainly not saying that God doesn’t care

or isn’t involved in what happened there.

But I am saying that

the choices that created the potential for such a disaster

were not God’s choices,

they were ours,

and if we’re into the blame game

and are looking for a target for the magnitude of the loss that has taken place

we need to start with ourselves.

There is within human society

a kind of corporate arrogance

that is rooted in our determination

to run our lives and our world

without submission to our Creator.

It is an arrogance

that often causes us to shake our fists in the face of the world as it now exists

and tell ourselves we are immune to the physical laws of life.

“I can abuse my body and pay no consequences.”

“I can play with bears and not be mauled.”

“I can write my own rules for life

and the world will obey.”

And the remarkable thing

is that there will be many

who will do it again.

The city will be rebuilt

in the same place

and the same way.

But I must admit

that there is a big part of me

that has grown very weary

of my Lord forever being blamed

for the consequences brought about by the choices of men and women.

A second observation I would like to offer

is that events such as these

do not produce changed behavior in those involved,

they simply reveal what was already there.

When the reports of all of the looting,

and the brutality,

and the violence and rapes began to surface this past week

I heard an interview on one of the news shows

with a person who is apparently a recognized authority on disaster victims.

It was clear in her comments

that she simply refused to believe

that such things were happening

on as wide a scale as the news was reporting.

To her

the thought that people would act in such a way

at a time of national crisis

was simply not possible.

She was convinced that man is basically good,

and when given the chance

that basic goodness will come to the surface.

But when we look at what our God says about us

we see a very different picture.

We are told that each of us do have tremendous value to God,

and that He loves each of us deeply.

But we are also told that,

apart from the recreative work of Christ within us,

JER 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?”

MAT 15:19 “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.”

And it shouldn’t surprise us

because every one of us enters this world self-centered,

determined to create for ourselves

the best possible life we can get.

Which means that whenever we are given the choice

between what we want and what someone else wants

we’ll choose for ourselves if we can get away with it without consequence.

The chief tool established by God within human society

to keep our self-centeredness in check

are those institutions of human authority established by Him.

And even though all of them carry some measure of corruption

and abuse,

they still serve to keep our human self-centeredness in check

so that we do not completely self-destruct as a society.

All that happened this past week

was that there was created within our society

a tiny pocket in which, for a brief time,

all human authority

and all apparent accountability for people’s actions were removed.

And we discovered what we look like without it.

And events such as these simply reveal what is in the hearts of men and women.

And of course it works both ways.

Such events not only bring out the evil within people’s hearts,

they also bring out the good where it exists.

I like what Peter says to the people of God in First Peter 1:6-7.

In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ...”.

Unfortunately,

most of the redemptive acts of goodness,

and kindness,

and caring,

and compassion that came out of people this past week

never made it onto the evening news

because evil captures a media audience so much better than redemption.

Which brings me to my third observation -

we have no accurate basis upon which to evaluate the redemptive work of God

in all that has happened this past week

because the miracles of God are always individual.

God doesn’t deliver groups,

He doesn’t save masses.

With Him it is always personal,

always individual.

When I bowed before my Lord in the fall of 1966

God did not respond by thinking,

“Oh good! I have one more!”

He responded by thinking,

“How wonderful! I have Larry.”

And the same thing happened

when you came to Him with your life.

He didn’t just want a bigger group.

He didn’t just want more people.

He wanted you.

And the works of deliverance,

and courage,

and kindness,

and compassion,

and salvation brought about by God this past week

were all individual acts

in the individual lives of those who knew Him,

or who reached out to Him in faith at a time of great need.

I mention this simply because I want us to know

that what we have access to now in the way of knowledge about this disaster

gives us no adequate basis for accurate evaluation of what happened.

I love what Paul says to the Corinthians.

1CO 4:5 Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts; and then each man's praise will come to him from God.

And then just two final brief comments.

First of all,

even in the midst of all of the pain,

and loss,

and turmoil brought about by such disasters,

events like these are potentially

tremendously cleansing for the human race

because they force us to recognize the way things really are.

The only adequate foundation,

the only source of true security in life is God Himself.

Where was God in all of this?

Well, He was right where He always is,

there with His people,

in their hearts,

in their lives,

in their turmoil,

holding them securely in the palm of His hand,

being for them

their hope,

and their inner strength,

and their source of security.

I have never gone through a hurricane

and as long as I remain in Alaska

I never will.

But I have gone through

my own personal hurricanes several times in my life.

And each time I have found my God there with me,

in the eye of the storm,

when it seemed as if my life would be torn apart.

And never have I been more deeply aware of my need for Him

or held to Him more tightly

than at those times.

And never have I seen things

more as they really are,

or seen my God as He really is

then at those times when I have known

that He is my only hope in this life.

And then, a final obvious statement

about how we should respond to what has happened.

We respond with compassion,

and as God leads, with generosity to those in need,

boldly affirming now, as always,

the absolute goodness

and the adequacy of our God for every need

in the lives of all those who come to Him.

HEB 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.