I am sure we have all been seeing the pictures and video coming from our islands. I have been heartbroken at seeing the damage done and knowing that it represent lives and livelihoods interrupted. We have been praying for many of you who evacuated only to learn this storm seemed to follow you. Grateful for technology and social media that has kept us updated on the whereabouts and safety of so many.
Like you, we are anxious to get back home, to see with our own eyes how things are. To assess what has happened to our home and all of yours who we care so much about. To start cleaning up, rebuilding where needed. To gather as a church family and share stories, cry together, and hopefully laugh a bit as well. To encourage one another as we face the things awaiting us. I am not sure which is tougher: waiting while the storm was raging or waiting to go home now that is has gone.
Our lives will be changed by this storm, though to what degree or for how long no one can be sure. Maybe we can all relate to Paul when he talks about praying, even begging multiple times that God would relieve His suffering. God’s answer was clear:
“But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).
I am weak. I am a little fearful of what the next weeks hold. But God has promised His grace to sustain me. May we as the body of Christ boast of our weakness so that God’s power may rest on us. May we learn, through difficulty, how to better be the hands and feet of Jesus in Key Largo for the glory of our great and all sufficient God.