This morning, I -- like thousands -- turned on The Weather Channel to watch, well, to watch men and women standing in front of Lake Ponchartrain's waves, demonstrating once again that lake water does indeed flow to shore. I watched men and women show off their arm muscles in tight tee-shirts and offer a living testimony to abdomen crunches, showing their dedication to the task at hand by tying bright blonde hair into a ponytail and stuffing the carefully coiffed rest of it into a hat. How dare they muss that mug?
I watched the Gulf of Mexico's strangely liquid mud begin that slow crawl to less than pristine sand, dampening the feet of those "brave" souls who were wading and wandering. What wacky fun.
The talking heads spoke about the "angry" Gulf, as waves -- the like of which I haven't seen since the last time the grand kids stayed over and took a bath -- crash-landed into that land mass between Mobile and New Orleans that I can't quite name right now.
They spoke about how things don't look that bad as the show aired, (8:45 a.m. Tuesday), but that they will undoubtedly get worse. Ain't that the truth?
I fear their mommas and their daddys, watching with shrimp-baited breath, were concerned not about how bad it was going to get but how much they spent on a college education that allows their children to stand in front of a camera and talk for hours on end about, well, nothingwhatsoever.
Respectfully, these folks are were doing a job, a job I fear they were paid handsomely for. But, again respectfully because they are some momma's and daddy's children, apparently one's looks are enough to get one a job standing in front of a Gulf that can become real, real angry in the matter of 24 hours and talking about, wishing for (it seems), that aforementioned Gulf would just as soon blow into a murderer so that they could justify their, uh, standing there, muscles bulging, straight teeth gleeming, quality information blowing all around them.
Later in the day, when the wind started its line-dancing and those TWC hats started flopping and fliping like a skewered shark till they blew slam off, it wasn't nearly as funny. When the tropical weather becomes a punch-line in a Bruce Willis' movie, you know you've hit the big time.
I guess that's the whole and real point this morning. This is some serious mess. It had been packed away in someone's attic for seven years, and someone ripped the packing tape off it and suddenly it's not so dang funny any more.
It might seem as if I shouldn't find humor in this time. I know, I know. Gallos humor and such, right? Hey, college girls' humidity-hair gone bad almost always does run the risk of stepping over the line. Understand me please. I know that my wife, Mary, and my lives were never the same after Hurricane Katrina. I don't know where we would be if it hadn't happened, but I know we would be closer to our children and grandchildren. Absolutely.
Does that mean our lives would have been better? I'll let God handle the big stuff. Those kind of things are far above my pay grade.
Till then, I'll laugh, and I'll cry.
People died in Haiti. Died. Gone. Sadness invading like kudzu. People who were loved, who lived glorious or munane lives and were far too quickly gone. Picked up by angry winds. Drowned in angry seas. Never to reach those goals they were never going to reach in the first place.
That's life. That's what we do, all of us. Anyone who says differently, tells you it's easy or it's simple or it's absolutely stone-cold full of blessing is misreading the wonderful scriptures or is a bit teeched, as my momma used ot say.
Theologically, I could shout into the coming storm to stay away. Heck, some probably have prayed that it go to, uh, Georgia. But they are simply misguided folk. I could shout some stuff about God testing us in our hour of grief, in our time of storm.
But what I think I will do today, this cloudy, dreary, soon to be remarkably ugly day according to the lass with straight blonde hair that I could pay to scalp and put just a smidge on my old bald head, is just point out that through the storm, through the rain, we're all in this together. Wonderful, so wonderful, is his unfailing love. His cross speaks to the clouds, to the streaks of power across the sky, to the loud hammering of thunder. He loves, powerful works displayed for all to see.
It might not seem that way. It might seem as if we're scattered to the points of the compass. It might seem as if we're as lost as that 100th sheep on a deeply disturbed Tuesday.
But we're not lost. We're searching. We're not scared. We're concerned. We're not anything more than what we truly, truthfully are. We're sinners in need of a glorious, marvelous, Savior. His hand reaches above the wave, life preserver being his very blood.
Through the storm, we're simply shown His love. Nothing more. Nothing less. Let the river flow, the wind blow and the people of God go. That's beauty in the night.
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