Categories
Devotional Memoir

Hope during a tsunami

The slow but certain flood of a tsunami moves across the globe today.  

I’ve watched videos from the one that marked our lives in 2004. The wave that advanced silently. Powerfully. Into Aceh. The water just kept coming. Pushing further inland. One bright, blue-skied day. 

And then, as waves do, it pulled back out to sea. Leaving devastation. Empty communities. Unimaginable loss. 

Today. The other tsunami. Changing the topic of our daily conversations. To quarantines and lockdowns. Limiting spread to flatten the curve. Shortages of medical supplies. Death counts.

And I remember the Scripture verses that gave hope to the inexperienced. In the December 2004 tsunami and the year that followed.

Aceh. Devastation as far as the eye could see. Nearly two months after the tsunami. February 2005.
Categories
Devotional Making Disciples

Living in the unprecedented

Today is the day. Yes, today. While panic swirls in the atmosphere. Surging through conversations and broadcasts and social media. As a global pandemic  postpones, cancels, locks down.

Today is the day. To remember what is true. And focus on the lifeblood of this walk by faith. The only way we live and breathe and have our being.

Jesus invites us. Right in the middle of the normal and the upside down. Whether we’re walking through the ordinary or the unprecedented.

Abide in the Vine. Photo: Paul Lucyk, Unsplash
Categories
Crossing Cultures Making Disciples Memoir

The other pandemic

We meet for lunch. Fellowship over Mediterranean food. Simply connecting while all around us the global spread of a virus ensues. Intensifies.

Events cancel. Borders tighten. Universities move to virtual classrooms. Our best-laid plans are disrupted. Interrupted. Changed.

We sit in sunshine and cool air. Sisters conversing about life journeys. Children. The hard and unexpected turns in the path this past year. The joy of following Him.

Empty chairs. Photo by Dewang Gupta, Unsplash.