When the Unthinkable Catastrophe Strikes
What follows is a message I preached on October 20, 2024. The sermon was a departure from my norm. Rather than sitting with a particular piece of scripture and mining it for its wisdom, I moved through a series of poems, passages of scripture, and devotional messages that have spoken to me when cares and challenges, tribulations and tumult have been my daily food…
On March 22, 2020, many congregations in New Hampshire gathered for their last in-person worship before hunkering down in obedience to stay-at-home orders. As we assemble here this morning, four years and seven months later, we are a divided nation and many of our fellow Americans are picking up the pieces after two devastating hurricanes left …
Catastrophes. Events causing great and often sudden damage, destruction or suffering.
On May 20, our nephew, Bernard died of COVID-19. He contracted the virus in the course of his work as a nurse in a health care facility. Five other members of our family—Bernie’s wife (a nurse practitioner), three of their children and Bernie’s brother all contracted COVID. All, but Bernie, survived. In the very next week, the mothers of three of my friends died and the spouses of two others died as well.
Then another dear friend was diagnosed with cancer in her left lung and lymph nodes. She began a round of radiation and chemotherapy treatments and she waited. Waited for two months to see if more chemo would lie ahead or if surgery would remove the last of the blight in her body or if she was too far gone and would be deciding what to do with the 12 to 18 months of life it was estimated would be left to her. Her entire left lung has since been removed, and because cancer has been found in three of 18 lymph nodes, she’s looking at two more rounds of chemotherapy.
Then on May 29, my husband, Gene, suffered a devastating ischemic stroke, was taken by ambulance to York Hospital where he was given a clot-busting medication to restart blood flow to his brain. He was transferred that same day to Mass. General and days later, to Northeast Rehab at Pease in Portsmouth. He came home on June 19.
He has had to relearn how to turn on a light, how to open a door latch, how to button a shirt. Heretofore a voracious reader, Gene is now relearning the alphabet. He’s lost his peripheral vision and so can no longer drive. Though the information is in his head, he often struggles to find the words to communicate. He may ask the same question five times in a day because his memory is not what it used to be,
On July 27, he and I were sitting in stopped traffic at Alton Bay, when the driver of a Nissan Rogue didn’t see us and backed into the passenger side door of our vehicle. The week before—our RV, damaged two years ago in Hurricane Florence, was finally towed in for repairs. It’s now sitting in a bay at Camping World in Chichester, New Hampshire awaiting parts that are delayed because of manufacturing shutdowns during COVID.
Every one of my weeks, for the last seven months, has arrived with some new catastrophic news. The stressors in my life sometimes weigh so heavily on me that my shoulders ache, my mind is troubled, my heart is broken. How about you today? Are you feeling weary and heavy laden? A world of cares bearing down upon you?
Have your leaning circumstances, your props and pillars been knocked out from beneath you? Have you found it harder to locate and steer into your safe harbors of human reason and hope? Where is God when the ground is shaking, when your heart is breaking? When the catastrophe strikes? Can you hear Him or does He sometimes seem silent or asleep in the boat?
Well, there are indeed times and places where God will form a mysterious wall around us, and cut away all props, and all the ordinary ways of doing things, and shut us up to something Divine, which is utterly new and unexpected, something that old circumstances don’t fit into, where we don’t know just what will happen. Where God is cutting the cloth of our lives on a new pattern, where He presses us to look to Himself.
Perhaps, in these days, you have sometimes felt—as have I—that you’ve been swung off into some vast blue inter-stellar space, where you must reach for and hang on to God alone, holding on, holding fast, to the fountain of miracles because all you’d counted on heretofore has been cut out from under you.
There is a song that’s been rolling around in my head over these days, these months. Let’s listen to it now: Is He Worthy?
PLAY “IS HE WORTHY?”
Do you feel the world is broken? (We do)
Do you feel the shadows deepen? (We do)
But do you know that all the dark won’t stop the light from getting through? (We do)
Do you wish that you could see it all made new? (We do)
I’ve heard some say that we’re all in the same boat when it comes to the pandemic. But we’re not. We’re in different boats, and it may be that the pandemic and its accompanying changes and challenges have fallen in good places for you. That’s the case for my daughter and her family. That’s the case for many people I know. In whatever way this day may be opening— for me, for you, for us—I decided to bring a different kind of message this morning. It’s not all doom and gloom.
When catastrophes strike, when we are faced with daunting challenges, we often wish that God would tell us what He’s going to do. He doesn’t. Instead, He tells us who He is. And that, for a person of faith, can be, should be, must be, enough.
In the next moments, as I said, I’ll be sharing a different kind of message from my norm. Rather than sitting with a particular piece of scripture and mining it for its wisdom, we’ll be moving through a series of poems, passages of scripture, and devotional messages that have spoken to me, not only in recent months but also in other times when cares and challenges, tribulations and tumult have been my daily food.
We pull first from L.B. Cowman’s Streams in the Desert, where we find a story inspired by Isaiah 49, verse 2: “He has made me a polished shaft.”
There is a very famous “Pebble Beach” at Pescadero, on the California coast. The long line of white surf comes up with its everlasting roar, and rattles and thunders among the stones on the shore. They are caught in the arms of the pitiless waves, and tossed and rolled, and rubbed together, and ground against the sharp-grained cliffs. Day and night forever the ceaseless attrition goes on—never any rest. And the result?
Tourists from all the world flock there to gather the round and beautiful stones. They are laid up in cabinets; they ornament parlor mantels. But go further, around the point of the cliff that breaks off the force of the sea; and up in that quiet cove, sheltered from the storms, and lying ever in the sun, you shall find an abundance of pebbles that have never been chosen by the traveler.
Why are these left all the years through unsought? For the simple reason that they have escaped all the turmoil and attrition of the waves, and the quiet and peace have left them as they found them, rough and angular and devoid of beauty. Polish comes through trouble. Polish comes through trouble.
Since God knows what niche we are to fill, let us trust Him to shape us to it. Since He knows what work we are to do, let us trust Him to drill us to the proper preparation.
“O blows that smite! O hurts that pierce
This shrinking heart of mine!
What are ye but the Master’s tools
Forming a work Divine?”
“Nearly all God’s jewels are crystallized tears.”
Nearly all God’s jewels are crystallized tears.
*****
From Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest comes this:
“The typical view of the Christian life is that it means being delivered from all adversity. But it actually means being delivered in adversity, which is something very different…If you are a child of God, you will certainly encounter adversities, but Jesus says you should not be surprised when they come. ‘In the world, you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’ In this, He is saying, ‘There is nothing for you to fear’…God doesn’t give us overcoming life—He gives us life as we overcome. The strain of life is what builds our strength. If there is no strain, there will be no strength.” If there is no strain, there will be no strength.
*****
In 2nd Corinthians 6:9, we read: “As dying and behold we live.”
“I had a bed of asters last summer, that reached clear across my garden in the country. Oh, how gaily they bloomed. They were planted late. On the sides were yet fresh blossoming flowers, while the tops had gone to seed. Early frosts came, and I found one day that that long line of radiant beauty was seared, and I said, “Ah! the season is too much for them; they have perished”; and I bade them farewell. I disliked to go and look at the bed, it looked so like a graveyard of flowers. But, four or five weeks ago, my attention was called to the fact that along the whole line of that bed there were asters coming up in the greatest abundance; and I looked, and behold, for every plant that I thought the winter had destroyed, there were fifty plants that it had planted. What did those frosts and surly winds do?
They caught my flowers, they slew them, they cast them to the ground, they trod with snowy feet upon them, and they said, leaving their work, “This is the end of you.” And the next spring there were for every root, fifty witnesses to rise up and say, “By death we live.” And as it is in the floral tribe, so it is in God’s kingdom. By death came everlasting life.
By crucifixion and the sepulchre (the tomb) came the throne and the palace of the Eternal God. By overthrow came victory. Do not be afraid to suffer. Do not be afraid to be overthrown. It is by being cast down and not destroyed; it is by being shaken to pieces, and the pieces torn to shreds, that men become men of might, and that one a host; whereas men that yield to the appearance of things, and go with the world, have their quick blossoming, their momentary prosperity and then their end, which is an end forever.”
So wrote Henry Ward Beecher.
Do not be afraid to suffer. Do not be afraid to be overthrown. It is by being cast down and not destroyed; it is by being shaken to pieces, and the pieces torn to shreds, that we become persons of might.
*****
In Philippians chapter 4 we read:
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. And remember, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. And the God of peace will be with you.
I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.”
It is by being cast down and not destroyed; it is by being shaken to pieces, and the pieces torn to shreds, that we become persons of might, persons of strength.
In Hebrews 11:8, we read, “He went out, not knowing where he was going.”
And from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest, we have this reflection on the passage:
Have you ever gone out in this way? If so, there is no logical answer possible when anyone asks you what you are doing. One of the most difficult questions in Christian work is, “What do you expect to do?” You don’t know what you are going to do. The only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing.
Continually examine your attitude toward God to see if you are willing to “go out” in every area of your life, trusting in God entirely. It is this attitude that keeps you in constant wonder, because you don’t know what God is going to do next. Each morning as you wake, there is a new opportunity to “go out,” building your confidence in God.
“[D]o not worry about your life…nor about the body,” we read in Luke 12:22. In other words, don’t worry about the things that concerned you before you did “go out.” Have you been asking God what He is going to do? He will never tell you. God does not tell you what He is going to do—He reveals to you who He is. Do you believe in a miracle-working God, and will you “go out” in complete surrender to Him until you are not surprised one iota by anything He does?
Believe God is always the God you know Him to be when you are nearest to Him. Then think how unnecessary and disrespectful worry is! Let the attitude of your life be a continual willingness to “go out” in dependence upon God, and your life will have a sacred and inexpressible charm about it that is very satisfying to Jesus. You must learn to “go out” through your convictions and experiences until you come to the point in your faith where there is nothing between yourself and God. “Go out.”
Companion to this, from My Utmost to His Highest, are these assurances from the devotional guide, Streams in the Desert, which were inspired by Proverbs 4:12: “When you go, your way shall be opened up before you, step by step.”
The Lord never builds a bridge of faith except under the feet of the faith-filled traveler. If He builds the bridge a rod ahead, it would not be a bridge of faith. That which is of sight is not of faith.
There is a self-opening gate which is sometimes used in country roads. It stands fast and firm across the road as a traveler approaches it. If he stops before he gets to it, it will not open. But if he will drive right at it, his wheels press the springs below the roadway, and the gate swings back to let him through. He must push right on at the closed gate, or it will continue to be closed.
This illustrates the way to pass every barrier on the road of duty. Whether it is a river, a gate, or a mountain, all the child of Jesus has to do is to go for it. If it is a river, it will dry up when you put your feet in its waters. If it is a gate, it will fly open when you are near enough to it, and are still pushing on. If it is a mountain, it will be lifted up and cast into a sea when you come squarely up, without flinching, to where you thought it was. Is there a great barrier across your path of duty just now? Just go for it, in the name of the Lord, and it won’t be there.
We sit and we weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty said, “Up and onward forevermore.” Let us move on and step out boldly, though it be into the night, and we can scarcely see the way. The path will open, as we progress, like the trail through the forest, or the Alpine pass, which discloses but a few rods of its length from any single point of view.
Press on! If necessary, we will find even the pillar of cloud and fire to mark our journey through the wilderness. There are guides and wayside inns along the road. We will find food, clothes and friends at every stage of the journey, and as Samuel Rutherford so quaintly opined: “However matters go, the worst will be a tired traveler and a joyful and sweet welcome home.”
*****
In Exodus 14:21, we read: The Lord caused the sea to go back all that night.”
In this verse, there is a comforting message showing how God works in the dark. The real work of God for the children of Israel, was not when they awakened and found that they could get over the Red Sea; but it was “all that night.”
So, there may be a great working in your life when it all seems dark and you cannot see or trace, but yet, God is working. Just as truly did He work “all that night,” as all the next day. The next day simply manifested what God had done during the night. Is there anyone hearing these words this morning who may have gotten to a place where it seems dark?
“The Lord caused the sea to go back all that night.” Don’t forget that it was “all that night.” God works all the night, until the light comes. You may not see it, but all that “night” in your life, as you believe God, He works.
“All that night” the Lord was working,
Working in the tempest blast,
Working with the swelling current,
Flooding, flowing, free and fast.
“All that night” God’s children waited–
Hearts, perhaps in agony
With the enemy behind them,
And, in front, the cruel sea.
“All that night” seemed blacker darkness
Than they ever saw before,
Though the light of God’s own presence
Near them was, and sheltered o’er.
“All that night” that weary vigil
Passed; the day at last did break,
And they saw that God was working
“All that night” a path to make.
“All that night,” O child of sorrow,
Canst thou not thy heartbreak stay?
Know thy God in darkest midnight
Works, as well as in the day
*****
Have you come to the Red Sea place in your life,
Where, in spite of all you can do,
There is no way out, there is no way back,
There is no other way but through.
Then wait on the Lord with a trust serene
Till the night of your fear is gone;
He will send the wind,
He will heap the floods,
When He says to your soul, “Go on.”
And His hand will lead you through—clear through—
Ere the watery walls roll down,
No foe can reach you, no wave can touch,
No mightiest sea can drown;
The tossing billows may rear their crests,
Their foam at your feet may break,
But over their bed you shall walk dry shod
In the path that your Lord will make.
In the morning watch, ‘neath the lifted cloud,
You shall see but the Lord alone,
When He leads you on from the place of the sea
To a land that you have not known;
And your fears shall pass as your foes have passed,
You shall be no more afraid;
You shall sing His praise in a better place,
A place that His hand has made.
Thank you, Poet Annie Johnson Flint.
Remember, the Lord uses all things for the good of those who love Him. As Maya Angelou has reminded us, “storms eventually run out of rain.” Scientists will find a way to address murder hornets and bunny ebola. COVID will run its course. Cars and RVs can sometimes, usually, be repaired. The faith that has sustained our friend, Cathy, through her cancer diagnoses and treatments has ministered to many. Her unwavering witness of dependence on the Lord has deepened the faith of many. Our faith in a loving God has bolstered Gene and me through these stroke-stricken months and we’re astonished at the remarkable progress we see everyday in his recovery. The loved ones I mentioned, who have died, have—to a person—found healing in going home to the Lord they had served throughout their days on earth. We may not always see things turn out as we might wish, but the Lord will do what is right, good and best.
*****
One final story.
In 2012, Phillips, Craig and Dean released their song “Tell Your Heart to Beat Again.” It was inspired by the true story of a heart surgeon. After removing a patient’s heart to repair it, the surgeon returned it to the chest and began gently massaging it back to life. But the heart wouldn’t restart. More intense measures followed, but the heart still wouldn’t beat. Finally, the surgeon knelt next to the unconscious patient and spoke to her: “Miss Johnson,” he said, “this is your surgeon. The operation went perfectly. Your heart has been repaired. Now tell your heart to beat again.” Her heart began to beat.
The idea that we could tell our physical heart to do something might seem strange, but it has spiritual parallels. “Why, my soul, are you downcast?” the psalmist says to himself. “Put your hope in God” (Psalm 42:5). “Return to your rest, my soul,” says another, “for the Lord has been good to you” (116:7). After beating Israel’s enemies in war, Deborah, a judge, revealed that she too had spoken to her heart during battle. “March on, my soul,” she told it, “be strong!” (Judges 5:21), because the Lord had promised victory (4:6-7).
Our capable Surgeon has mended our hearts (so we read in Psalm 103:3). So, when fear, depression, or condemnation come, perhaps we too should address our souls and say: March on! Be strong! Feeble heart, beat again.
So, remember this day, that polish and spiritual beauty come through trouble and that nearly all God’s jewels are crystallized tears. Remember that, if there is no strain, there will be no strength. Don’t be afraid to suffer. Don’t be afraid to be overthrown. It is by being cast down and not destroyed; it is by being shaken to pieces, and the pieces torn to shreds, that we become persons of might. Rejoice in the Lord always and find your contentment in the One who, in every situation, gives you strength. Go out in complete surrender to the will of the miracle-working God, and your life will have a sacred and inexpressible charm about it that will be very satisfying to our Lord Jesus. I can testify today that, throughout my life, the Lord has always made a way where there would seem to be no way. Press on. Know the Lord is working in the dark and in the light. Don’t be afraid. When fear, depression or condemnation come, say to your soul: March On! Be strong. Feeble heart, beat again.
Amen? Amen
Song: Let There Be Love
As is your custom, may we lift together a shared benediction from 2nd Corinthians 13:14: “May the grace of Jesus Christ and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us now and forever.”
I’d like us to listen now to The Blessing. This song based on Numbers 6, verses 24 to 26, which is known as the Aaronic Blessing, has become a sort of unofficial Christian anthem for the pandemic. Churches in countries and regions, across the globe, have gathered together to create their own versions of this beautiful song. My favorite, which will be played now, comes to us from 25 churches across six islands of Hawaii. The Blessing.
Benediction: And now may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift His countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen
The foregoing was a sermon I preached at a church in New Hampshire on October 20, 2024.
Featured Image: Severe weather montage. From left to right starting at the top: F5 tornado; wildfire; thunderstorm and lightning; flooding; hurricane; ice storm; giant hail. Source: Fallschirmjager.
DFG Hailson 