I'm planted on my laptop at the Starbucks on 31 in Hoover. It's a beautiful day so sitting at a small table outside in the sunshine and breeze is a must. I'm watching everyone drive by as they always do. Still speeding, still cutting people off, still so concerned with the unnecessary hustle and bustle of life. I have not returned to such a state yet after Wednesday's tornado experience. In the moment we were so unconcerned, but walking through the waste of what was left has left an unforgettable movie of devastation in my mind. Unspeakably bad. No words or pictures will ever do justice to what we saw, but above is a glimpse of what we were walking through.
It does something to you. Not in a bad way, but in a strange way. I got a very real wake up call to how much my life is not in my own hands. It never has been. What will come, will come. You could call this a disaster, as it appears, or you could call it an awakening, a cleansing, a new beginning. I spent 48 hours with no power, no Internet and no phone service. We walked miles and miles, and you know what? We were just fine. In fact, I met more people in those 48 hours than I've met in years, I prayed with more people, noticed things, and felt the strangest feeling that this was not an end but a way to shake the scales from a lot of eyes. Maybe the best way to wake up a dying city, is just to shake it up enough to remind it that it's still very much alive. People were alive. Not only that, they were actually living as the hands and feet of Jesus even when they weren't aware of it, running to help anywhere they could.
Hope was flowing like a river, the ones with their eyes open, saw it everywhere. The shadows prove there is sunshine friends.
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