Cairo: Jesus in Egypt & God's Unusual Leaning
God seldom gives us all we need to understand, but He always gives us what we need in order to obey. The story of Jesus in Egypt as a boy offers a...
We hadn’t paid attention to the news. It was too late to leave. So we were ill-prepared when Hurricane Celia slammed into Corpus Christi.
(U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 1st Class Michael Pendergrass. Public domain)
I was only 3 years old on August 3, 1970, but my memories are vivid. We sat in the hallway in the middle of the house, closed all the doors, and I ate animal crackers while my stepdad played the guitar.
All the while, I heard what sounded like freight trains encircling outside our house.
After the storm, the neighborhood looked like a war zone. Amazingly, our house was one of the only ones untouched, although 80% of the city’s buildings got damaged.
Here’s a video of the hurricane and its aftermath (best turn your sound off).
Because every fence in our neighborhood lay flat, all the neighbors had one large yard—with no separation. Until the electricity came back on, each evening different neighbors would open their deep freezes and everybody ate barbecue!
I ran across this quote from a fellow survivor:
We all remember the backyard barbecues as neighborhoods gathered to cook the freezer supplies that would otherwise spoil in the heat. Every Celia survivor remembers . . . the sense of shared endurance and the readiness to lend a hand. The definition of neighbor was extended to anyone who had survived the storm. —Nick Jimenez
My stepdad spent hours with our neighbor as they helped each other clean the yards and rebuild the fences.
Normally, they didn’t take the time to engage in conversation, but the disaster forced the neighborhood to be neighborly. As they finished building the fence between them, they shook hands and my stepdad said:
Well, I’ll see you next hurricane.
(Photo: Three men help to rebuild after Hurricane Celia, August 23, 1970. From Caller.com)
The aftermath of Hurricane Celia brought these lessons and observations to mind.
Sometimes I wonder if we could avert more disaster if we lived this way all the time.
Tell me what you think: What lessons have disasters taught you? To leave a comment, just click here.
Click here to leave a comment.
God seldom gives us all we need to understand, but He always gives us what we need in order to obey. The story of Jesus in Egypt as a boy offers a...
Roads are often built for one reason, but God uses them in our lives for another altogether. The Appian Way in Rome proved this so in the life of the...
Two gardens in the Bible, Eden and Gethsemane, provided the settings for two choices that brought opposite results. The Bible wildly contrasts these...