Life can go from normal to nightmare in a nanosecond.
Take hurricane Katrina in 2005. In two days there was no “normal” left for hundreds of thousands of Gulf coast residents. The well-housed went to homeless overnight, and people were left struggling just to find shelter, find food, and find clean water. The bare basics of life became the most all-important “finds.”
But not long after — once two days became a week — another need became pungently apparent. People needed clean clothes. Babies continued to trash their onesies, socks stank, T-shirts were as hard as T-bones.
It was in response to the Katrina catastrophe that Tide detergent first started a program called “Loads of Hope.” An eighteen-wheeler “semi” was out-fitted with thirty-two energy efficient washers and dryers. With its accompaniment of support vans, Tide’s “Loads of Hope” express was able to handle up to three hundred loads of laundry each day. Katrina refugees were offered a place where their laundry could be washed, dried and folded. For free!
“Cleanliness is next to godliness” The gift of cleanliness. We don’t think about cleanliness until it is gone. Your sink stops up and the dirty dishes start to accumulate until they take over the kitchen. Your washing machine dies and suddenly you have no clean underwear and the laundry room turns into a Fort Knox for funky smells.
Or, worst of all, something in your life breaks — a relationship, a promise, a dream, a hope, a haven — and a snowballing of bad side-effects start stinking up your world more than you could have ever imagined.
We are creatures. And creatures stink and sweat and stain what we touch with sins and shortcomings…
I watch the evening news every night. Almost every day I witness the horrible destruction of tornadoes, neighborhoods and whole towns gone in less than a minute. I witness the terrible fires in California and New Jersey as whole towns are consumed in flames in a matter of minutes.
Then I turn on a cable news station and see how migrants are being treated as less than human. The migrants I talk to in South Florida are here because the gangs in Central or Latin America pull their kids out of school and make them either deal in drugs or kill them. They come seeking a simple life for their family, not even a better life.
I think of a family I know who lost all of their possessions, including their $4 million house in a couple of minutes when the fires raged in California. The town where they had lived for 30 years was gone. They had nowhere to go. Hotels and rental houses were all full for many miles. All of their friends and neighbors were scattered everywhere. The above article brings to mind what my friends told me was the hardest thing to find during those recent fires – new or clean underwear. The stores and the shelves were all empty of underwear. “Loads of Hope” were again needed.
Today I am the last one to frown on a migrant. With the Hurricane Season coming, I may have to leave town and listen to the news. If my building is destroyed, all my possessions will be gone and I may be living in my car, parked in a Wal-Mart parking lot, with migrants as my new neighbors, and wondering where I can get some clean underwear.
Have YOU ever considered what life would be like if a tornado, fire or hurricane destroyed YOUR home and neighborhood? Have YOU ever considered that there are 304 million international migrants in the world today who have had to leave their homes or lose their lives?
YOU NEED TO RELEASE THE LOAD GOD NEVER MEANT FOR YOU TO CARRY, AND FOCUS ON WHAT GOD CALLED YOU TO DO!
Treats for the Soul PLUS. Please give a listen to my PODCAST. I think you will enjoy my Commentary and Prayer Reflection on today’s message. Just click the white triangle in the blue circle above.
