When I decided to come to New Orleans, the first thing that came to mind was “Hurricane Katrina.” You can’t help it when you hear the name “New Orleans,” to think of Katrina, the storm has attatched itself to the name of the city.
I brought a Sports Illustrated Magazine with me down here and the title is “After the Storm,” with a picture of two members of the New Orleans Saints hugging after their first football game following the Hurricane. And this innevitable attatchment between storm and city has infected the lives of every single person in New Orleans. When I ask to hear people’s stories they split their lives up into two sections: “Before the storm” and “After the Storm.” It amazes me again and again how many people were born and raised here, saying they have been here “their whole lives, except of course, when the storm came.” Then, after the storm they were moved…and the locations are all different; or those who say “We moved here after the storm,” or “we moved here about seven years ago, just in time for the storm.”
You can see it in the city itself, the empty overgrown lots, the endless rows of houses lined up one after another after another that are still boarded up from the storm, with a giant X by the door stating plainly the number of people who were found dead in the house as well as who the house was inspected by and the date. There are houses that look brand new next to houses that are torn, boarded up, desolate, almost like the stillness that comes after a big storm.
I didn’t realize when God brought me here that the people whom I would be working with would not just be rebuilding homes, schools, workplaces, and churches, but lives as well. You can lose a lot in a storm. Your home, your family, your roots, and for some, even your faith.
But you know what? Someone once told me that even when it is storming, when the sky’s are filled with clouds, when the water pours from the sky and there is no sign of stopping, the sun is still shining somewhere in the midst of it all, even if you can’t see it. I like to think that maybe this is why God has brought me to this place…to bring His light, His Son.
I see it around me in the small churchplants all over the city, little rays of light bursting through the aftermath of the storm. I seeit through the people whom I have already had the pleasure to meet. I even see it in the city itself. The new schools going up, home after home being rebuilt. And the sunsets are probably where I see it most of all. I have yet to be here an evening when I have not thouroughly enjoyed gazing at the magnificant sunsets that God has painted in this city’s sky. I like to think that the sunsets are God’s way of giving the people of New Orleans a gift for withstanding the storm. A physical reminder of his compassion and sovereignty.
A reminder that even when the storms cloud our vision, the sun is still shining, even when we can’t see it. And a reminder that more than houses need to be rebuilt. More than schools, workplaces, and even church buildings need to be rebuilt; lives need to be rebuilt. And sometimes, the only way to rebuild is to first tear down. Sometimes patching something up is not possible, sometimes the disaster, the tear, the storm, has created a mess that cannot be patched. Sometimes, it has to be completely rebuilt. And as one of my professors once told me, that is exactly what Christ came to do. He didn’t come to patch us up. He didn’t come to make us better, he came to make us brand new.
