Helping Victims of Hurricane Katrina

"And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?

"The King will answer and say to them, "Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me."

-Matthew 25:38-40

I read Cap'n Ed's "bleg" post this morning, and I can't beat his capture of the truly dire nature of the situation in the Katrina disaster area - and neither could Hugh Hewitt:

This time, we have a different set of circumstances. Instead of our distant cousins of the Indian Ocean, we now watch as our American brothers and sisters suffer through the destruction of perhaps the best-loved hometown in America, New Orleans. The devastation will go on for years. The entire community has disappeared under water - not just homes, but the businesses that employ the people who live there, the shops that fed and clothed them, the services that give Americans the high standard of living that we enjoy and take for granted.

They have nothing left. It goes beyond homelessness. It goes beyond unemployment. Our brothers and sisters have gone through the looking glass - and as Americans, we need to step up to bring them back. [emphasis added]

This echoes Austin Bay's comment that ""There's no America out there except America to respond to it. We've got to do it ourselves."

When watching the scenes of the devastation I was reminded of a scene toward the end of the 1997 movie Volcano. Tommy Lee Jones plays a local emergency management official who has to deal with the disaster of the La Brea tar pits becoming an active volcanic vent, raining ash, pumice bombs, and molten lava all over Los Angeles, California. After a series of implausible bootstrap heroics, the lava stream starts flowing through the underground subway tunnels. Jones and co-star Ann Hecht, who plays a spunky geologist, determine that the stream will reach a terminus right outside Cedar Sinai hospital, where most of the city's casualties -and Jones' daughter - have been sent. Jones proposes using explosives to make a trench to connect with a nearby canal so that the lava can be directed into the ocean, but Hecht tells him that it won't work because the angle of the topography will sent the lava flow the other way - straight into Cedar Sinai.

After having spent all night and day pulling rabbits out of his hat, Jones finds himself all out of ideas. He looks around, mouth opening and closing with nothing coming out. Finally he says, "I don't know what to do...I don't know what to do."

That's the expression I saw on the face of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin the other night. Not that he and other government officals don't know what to do as such, but in terms of the sheer scale of the task confronting them.

And that's why we all need to help.

We have adopted Samaritan's Purse as our designated disaster relief conduit. And they are already in action:

Two Samaritan's Purse Disaster Relief Units have reached Alabama and are assessing where best to work to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. The units initially will be based in Mobile and work westward into Mississippi and Louisiana as conditions permit.

Samaritan’s Purse is working with local churches and mobilizing hundreds of volunteer workers to help repair as many homes as possible. Two tractor-trailers loaded with emergency supplies and equipment will provide crews with chain saws and heavy equipment to remove fallen trees from houses and streets. Other teams will cover damaged roofs with weatherproof plastic. Generators can provide emergency electricity for the sick or elderly. Flooded houses can be pumped dry and cleaned of debris.

Needs are great throughout the region in the aftermath of Katrina, which slammed into the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds and torrential rain early Monday morning. The hurricane was one of the most destructive storms in U.S. history. Officials said the death toll had reached at least 110 in Mississippi, and could go a lot higher. Louisiana officials said many were feared dead there, too. Across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, more than 1 million residents remained without electricity, some without clean drinking water.

Samaritan’s Purse focuses on helping the neediest, particularly the poor and elderly. The Disaster Relief Units work in partnership with local churches to ensure that spiritual needs are met, too. Teams pray with residents and present them with a Bible when the work is completed.

SP is far from the only one. Please feel free to contribute to any or all of them. The point being to give. Whether it's "out of [ou]r surplus...or out of our poverty, put[ting] in all we own, all we ha[ve] to live on" for "Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."

And yes, I'm putting my moolah where my piehole is.

While you're digging out your credit card and/or checkbook, consider this bit of spiritually mature perspective from Mark D. Roberts:

Perhaps one of the reasons I'm so bugged by scenes of looting is that, at some level, I relate to the looters. They force me to confront things in human nature – indeed, in my own nature – that I'd rather deny. I can't imagine that I'd ever steal from a Wal-Mart, if, heaven forbid, the city of Irvine was devastated by some natural disaster, like an earthquake. But the greed and selfishness of my heart gets expressed in lots of other ways, ways that are much more subtle. Perhaps they're even more virulent because they're more easily rationalized away.

Let there be no doubt about it. Nature is broken, both the natural world and human nature. We human beings need, not only moral parameters to guide our behavior, but also spiritual transformation so that we might desire to do what's right.

And this is exactly what God provides, both through the revelation of Scripture, and through the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Someday God will mend this broken world. This is our hope. But, in the meanwhile, if we open our hearts to God today, that healing process can begin in us right now. And then we can be agents of God's restoration in the world.

Think of it as "anti-looting".