tablets of human hearts

Day 43

Three day weekends. I love them.

Ladies, let me tell you about a wonderful weekend. I think I’ve mentioned to some of you about a couple of Bible studies that I’ve participated in. The studies are by Beth Moore, an incredibly gifted, hilariously funny and obviously anointed gal from Houston Texas. She has about a dozen Bible studies and books published. Well, Friday night and Saturday morning, her ministry, Living Proof Ministries, conducted a simulcast, broadcast via satellite from New York. Churches around the nation and Canada were able to tune in and participate in the broadcast. The Gulf coast had been advertising the event for months. Because of the hurricane, Lifeway Bookstore hosted the simulcast for free for those of us here on the Mississippi coast. What an incredible event. It was refreshing, convicting, uplifting and inspiring.

Let me see if I can capture a bit of what she covered. I hope you get a portion of what I was blessed with this weekend.

Friday Night

We focused on the passage Psalm 126 – a song sung by the Israelites as they returned to Jerusalem from captivity.

(See Ezra 2:1 for the historical time frame of which the Psalm is thought to be written)

Captivity does not have to be a physical prison. Captivity is any sin, stronghold, addiction, bondage, fear, or anything else in our life that carries us away from the prosperity of God.

By prosperity, I mean spiritual prosperity, not physical or monetary (like the name it and claim it teachings).

Ephesians 1:3 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” These blessings are our spiritual prosperity found in Christ.

Job was in the captivity of grief so overwhelming; it consumed him for a season. Each and every one of us has experienced captivity to one degree or another. But God wants to bring us through any captivity to draw us back again to him and to bring us restoration.

Psalm 126:1-5 recounts a song of pilgrimage. A pilgrimage not experienced alone. Throughout the passage are the words “we, our, and us”. The Israelites returned to Zion together. Let us return to our God together, as sisters in Christ. Let us not walk alone.

Ezra 2:64-67 counts the number of Israelites returning to Zion: about 50,000. There were approximately 60,000 simulcast viewers (mostly women) signed up in hundreds of churches across the country. What amazing things God will do with hearts that are humbled before Him.

In the King James Version, Psalm 126, Job 42:10 and Micah 7:18 all use the word “again”: Again turning the Israelites from captivity, again restoring Job’s wealth, again having mercy on us. We have an awesome God of “agains”. No matter what our captivity, He wants to restore us again.

Down here on the coast we are dealing with a captivity of destruction from Katrina. We are experiencing a season of grief and loss. But God wants to restore us. Praise God, we are not walking alone. The sisters in Beth Moore’s simulcast prayed for us and refreshed us in praise and worship. Churches around our country are reaching out to us, supporting us in any way they can: with prayers, with workers to rebuild, with money, with food distribution, with encouragement. Many victims and survivors shake their fists at the government and insurance companies, but they cannot save us. Thank God we live in a country where our government is equipped and willing to help. But it is not meant to be our salvation and our crutch. The Lord is. In the New Testament, we read about Christians helping other Christians in need. How it must delight the Lord that His people are still responding in the same way. With Paul, we can say as he in did in 1 Thessalonians 1:2 “We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

I’ll recount the teachings from Saturday morning in my next email. This is probably enough to chew on for today. Friday night’s teaching was very comforting and encouraging. Saturday’s teaching was a whammie of conviction.

“May the eyes of your heart be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” Ephesians 1:18-19

Your sister in Christ

Grace & Peace

Day 38

It gets harder and harder for me to feel sorry for myself, when I see the progress we’re making on our home. Granted, we don’t have flood insurance, so we’re paying for all the repairs and replacements out of pocket, but maybe we’ll be approved for a low interest loan from FEMA. Sure, we have to do a lot of the work ourselves, but we’re learning a lot. And when I look back over the pictures of our house, as compared to many of the homes I’ve seen, it puts our damage into perspective. Of course, I pass some homes that sustained little to no damage, and wonder why that couldn’t be us. Ah well.

I’m sending some pictures along, attachments to a few emails. I finally managed to download them off of my camera. There is much I haven’t taken pictures of, but I’ve included a few that will give you an idea of what our lives look like.

I’ll include a brief description of each picture. Please excuse my poor attempts at humor.

Katrina 1 – Isaac’s Storm is one of the books I was reading as I prepared to write our CAT V (Five) story. The book tells of the 1900 storm that hit Galveston, killing over 6000 people in the storm surge. Ironically, it was at my bedside and was ruined in the flood waters.

Katrina 2 – A picture of our house when Jon arrived home on his reconnaissance trip. It looks pretty good from the outside, until you see the water line on our garage door.

Katrina 3 – One of the three trees in our yard that blew over. Three other trees fell into our yard and two trees were leaning precariously and needed to be removed.

Katrina 4 – Our redneck hot tub in the back yard. Actually, Jon and a crew of men had to remove our garden tub from our bathroom, to get to the wet sheet rock and insulation behind it.

Katrina 5 – The front of our house as it looks today. We’re still waiting for FEMA refuse removal to come down our street. Debris in the front yard is in vogue on the coast this year.

Katrina 6 – A view of the woods down one of our streets. It seems that literally every other tree in Diamondhead is either snapped or blown over. If a tree still stands, its limbs were ravaged by the wind and water.

Katrina 7 – Another view down one of our streets. Everyone who was flooded had to put their ruined furniture, belongings, sheetrock and insulation somewhere. It makes driving around the neighborhood quite a challenge, because the debris starts spilling over into the streets.

Katrina 8 – Another picture of our neighborhood. It would make an interesting reality show: Dodge the Debris.

Katrina 9 – One of the washed out houses in Diamondhead. The angry thirty foot storm surge roared through the neighborhood, ripping out everything inside.

Katrina 10 – Another washed out house in Diamondhead.

Katrina 11 – Jon and I took a very heartbreaking drive down to Bay St Louis. The big oak has a sign that reads “Tranquil Oaks”. Behind it is the remaining foundation of what used to be the home.

Katrina 12 – A home in Bay St Louis that was completely washed out, with the roof remaining on top of the foundation.

Katrina 13 – A common view for miles along the coast water front. Homes completely washed away, with the rubble washed inland and left behind.

Other observations.

Driving south on highway 603, cars are tossed about in the ditch like toys. People who live in the low lying areas are known to park their cars along side the highway, on high ground, before storms come through. Normally, their cars are fairly safe. Katrina’s storm waters surged right over them.

Driving through Waveland, we saw a boat in the drive through of Burger King, where the storm surge left it.

I was surprised at some of the buildings/homes that are left in Bay St Louis. But they were all under water and I’m sure are no longer structurally sound. I thought about all the antique stores that were down in the “Historic Downtown” – the merchandise ruined in the storm surge.

As we drove through the destroyed neighborhoods, the remaining trees had debris hanging from their limbs, up to thirty feet. How does one clean that up? I saw a little girl’s pink jacket hanging high on an oak branch.

We tried to find the remains of the Bed and Breakfast that we stayed at last year on our anniversary. The owner was on CNN shortly after the storm. She and some others survived the storm clinging for life in one of the old oaks, after the house crumbled in the storm surge. We thought we found where it used to be located, but couldn’t tell for sure, with ten-foot high rubble piles.

Life is still far from normal. Traffic is horrible where ever we go. Many businesses and restaurants are still not open (those that are repairable) and the ones that are open are short handed (many employees never returned to the coast), packed with customers and have limited hours. People have started to move out of the shock phase and into the angry, frustrated phase. This can be seen in people’s stupid driving and their rudeness in the stores. Everyone is tired, stressed and just wants to return to life as it was before a storm named Katrina blew into their lives.

“To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul; in you I trust, O my God… No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame… My hope is in you all day long.”
Psalm 25:1,2a and 5b

God bless

Grace & Peace

Day 34

Thursday we accomplished a great deal. Rocky is almost done sheetrocking the kitchen. Jon and I worked on the bedrooms. We are learning a great deal about mudding and sanding sheetrock. It only takes a couple of mistakes to figure out the wrong way to do something. I remember when Jon and I watched the building of the first home we purchased: the foundation, frame and sheetrock seemed to go up quite quickly and we were excited how things were moving along. But then, the work seemed to slow down and take a long time as the details were completed. As I considered this and thought about the details I’m learning about in this house, it occurred to me how like the building of our Christian lives it is.

We become Christians the instant we believe.

(Romans 10:9-10 That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.)

Christ is the foundation of our faith.

(1 Corinthians 3:11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.)

The frame work is built next in our lives and even this can be built rather quickly, as we learn the basic fundamentals of Christianity and turn away from the “bigger” sins in our lives. Then the Lord begins walking through the homes of our hearts, looking at the details of what is being built within.

We want to make sure what is built will last.

(1 Corinthians 3:12-13 If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work.)

The details take the longest. In our physical home we mud and sand the walls smooth, then match the texture to the rest of the walls. We will seal, prime and paint the walls. We will install all the doors and window frames, caulking each seam. We will have to install doors, hanging them so they swing smoothly. Then we’ll install the floors and cabinets. Any builder can tell you what we are learning; the details take the longest, if we want the home to be beautiful.

Christ wants our hearts to be beautiful – in fact He wants to transform us into His likeness.

(2 Corinthians 3:18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.)

As Christ resides in our hearts, He is concerned with the details. Any mature Christian can tell you what we are learning; the details take the longest, if we want our hearts to be beautiful.

Today, we will continue work on our house. Hopefully Rocky will be over again to hang some more sheetrock. After watching and learning from Rocky, Jon thinks he’ll be able to hang some himself. We will have some additional help today, some guys who are in the area on temporary orders, to help out with recovery efforts. We would like them to help us move some of our stuff.   Jon and I have made the decision to move into a friend’s empty house.   A friend of ours (than you Mark and Brenda Burton) will be transferring to the Gulf Coast from Hawaii and he has already purchased a home in Diamondhead. His home sustained no damage from the storm and he has offered to let us stay there as needed. The house is empty, but does have a complete kitchen so we can prepare and clean up meals. After a half dozen duty stations, we and the kids have learning how to “camp out” in our empty houses, awaiting our household goods. So, we’ll camp out until our home is livable (I think when the sheet rock is hung and ready to be painted and we can get some of our stuff somewhat organized). We’ve really enjoyed Bob and Staci’s hospitality; we’ve been living together for a month now, if you count the time we all stayed at Jon’s parents’ home right after the storm. Our living arrangements were pretty peaceful until we brought all the kids back from San Antonio (in anticipation of schools opening) – then the house seemed to get a lot smaller.   It has been fun and we hope the Tyo’s continue to allow us to visit. We just don’t want to “overstay” our welcome and we are very thankful we have options.

As Jon and I look back over the last few months, we are blessed to see the ways in which God has prepared us and provided for us during this time, spiritually, financially, physically and relationally. He is so good and a very present help in times of trouble. If He is for us, who can be against us? We will not give up hope, for we know we will be rewarded.

(Hebrews 10: 35-36 So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised.)

May we walk in obedience to Him during these times and do His will, not our own.

God bless

Grace & Peace