A few days ago, my wife and I hunkered down and waited for hurricane Helene to pass buy. The original reports said that because of the size of the hurricane it would be directly over our home in central Florida. Instead of turning east toward us it drifted to the northwest, passing over the Florida panhandle, and continuing north through Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Virginia. The destruction that was left behind has been catastrophic, particularly in the Blue Ridge Mountain area, and specifically the communities of Asheville, Black Mountain, and Swannanoa.
My wife, Roberta is from Black Mountain, and the pictures and news reports that fill the airwaves are an assault to her heart. I have been there on a number of occasions, once with her visiting members of her family and several times attending writer’s conferences. The area is beyond beautiful, its breathtaking. At dawn and dusk the sky paints the mountain ridges in hues of pink, purple, and gold creating stunning vistas, and I have been told that there are numerous cascading waterfalls and peaceful streams.
Today it is chaos. The landscape is no longer a kaleidoscope of red, orange, and yellow leaves offering some of the most stunning fall foliage to behold. Today, it is brown, muddy water, covered with a scattering of rooftops cresting above the water line. I struggle to imagen rushing flood waters in the mountains, I perceive it being in the flat, lowlands. Today, life in the tranquil setting of the Blue Ridge Mountains has taken on a macabre aura, an atmosphere more fitting for a battlefield, a battle we had lost.
I lived for over sixty years in the San Francisco Bay Area of California and have had the unnerving experience on numerous occasions of standing in a world that had lost its equilibrium. I have awakened to the sound of Christmas bulbs hitting the floor as the tree swayed rhythmically to music that only it could hear. I have watched as tall auditorium walls rippled like jello, and massive sections of concrete and steel quivered and broke apart. I spent two weeks in New Orleans just days following Katrina’s devastating reshaping of the Gulf Coast and saw empty fields of mud where entire communities once existed, and massive boats resting on highways miles from any water.
You would think I have grasped the simple truth that nothing is permanent, not our homes, or our lives. There is only One whom we can cling to with the confidence that whatever we face, He is immovable. He is our rock, and our salvation. He will not be washed away by flood waters. He will walk upon those waters to reach out to us! He said that all we have to do is call upon His name. His name is Jesus.
Ben
