 
What Katrina Can Teach Us
by Max Lucado
Who would have thought we would ever hear this phrase
spoken on a radio news report in America: "Today, about
25,000 refugees were moved from the Superdome in New
Orleans to the Astrodome in Houston."
For days, we've watched the tragedy continue to unfold in
Mississippi andLouisiana and, if you are like me, you've
wrestled with feelings of shock and disbelief.feelings that,
over the last five years, have become all too familiar. We
were barely into the new millennium when we saw towers
falling in New York City and planes crashing into the Pentagon
and the Pennsylvania farmland. We saw bombs over Baghdad
and witnessed the ancient land of Abraham become a war zone
for his ancestors. You'd think we had seen enough, but then
came the tsunami--a roaring wave that sucked life and
innocence out to sea.
And now the fruits of Katrina. A city sitting in twenty feet of
water. Citizens hacking their way onto roofs and helicopters
hovering over neighborhoods. Optimistic rescuers,
opportunistic looters, grateful people, resentful people--we
have seen it all.
And many have seen it up close. Katrina came to San
Antonio in the form of 12,500 evacuees. Many of you are
meeting them, feeding them, writing checks, and manning
shifts. And you, as much as any, have reason to wonder.
What is going on here? 9/11, Iraq, tsunami, Katrina. And
I didn't mention nor intend to minimize Hurricanes Dennis
and Ivan and Emily.
Jesus criticized the leaders of his day for focusing on the
weather and ignoring the signals: "You find it easy enough
to forecast the weather--why can't you read the signs
of the times?"
Matthew 16:2-3 (MSG).
What are we to learn from all of this? Is God sending us
a message? I think so. And, I think we'd be wise to pay
attention. There are some spiritual lessons that I think God
would want us to learn through this tragedy.
The first lesson we see is:
I. The Nature of Possessions: Temporary
As you've listened to evacuees and survivors, have you
noticed their words? No one laments a lost plasma
television or submerged SUV. No one runs
through the streets yelling, "My cordless drill is
missing" or "My golf clubs have washed away." If they
mourn, it is for people lost. If they rejoice, it is for
people found.
Could Jesus be reminding us that people matter
more than possessions? In a land where we have
more malls than high schools, more debt than credit,
more clothes to wear than we can wear, could Christ be
saying: "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of
greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of
his possessions"
(Luke 12:15)?
We see an entire riverboat casino washed up three blocks
and placed on top of a house in a neighborhood. You see
demolished $40,000 cars that will never be driven again, hidden
in debris. And in the background of our minds we hear the
quiet echoes of Jesus saying, "What good will it be for a man
if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?"
(Matthew 16:26).
Raging hurricanes and broken levees have a way of prying
our fingers off the stuff we love. What was once most
precious now means little; what we once ignored is now
of eternal significance.
A friend and I attended a worship service at Antioch
Baptist Church last Sunday night. Several African American
Church leaders had organized an assembly to pray for
the evacuees that have ended up in San Antonio. Many
of them sat on the front rows.dressed in all the clothing
they owned: t-shirts, jeans. Their faces were weary from
the week. But when the music started and the worship began,
they came to their feet and sang with tears in their
eyes.
They were rich. Are you that rich? Were all your
possession washed away, could you still worship? Would
you still worship? If not, you are holding things too tightly:
"Tell those rich in this world's wealth to quit being so full
of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here
today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God,
who piles on all the riches we could ever manage--to do
good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly
generous. If they do that, they'll build a treasury
that will last, gaining life that is truly life"
(1 Timothy 6:17-19 MSG).
Through Katrina, Christ tells us:
stuff doesn't matter; people do.
Understand the nature of possessions.
Be equally clear on:
II. The Nature of People: Sinners and Saints
We see the most incredible servants and stories of
selflessness and sacrifice. We see people of the projects
rescuing their neighbors, we see civil servants risking their
lives for people they've never seen. My wife Denalyn
and I toured a shelter supervised by one of our neighbors
here in San Antonio. We met a family of some twenty
cousins and siblings.
One six-year-old girl told Denalyn about the helicopter
man who plucked her off a third story porch and lifted
her to safety.
That child will never know who that man is. He'll never
seek any applause. He saved her life, all in a day's work.
We saw humanity at its best. And we saw humanity
at its worst.
Looting. Fighting. We heard stories of rapes and robberies.
Someone said, "The heavens declare the glory of God but the
streets declare the sinfulness of man." The video footage in
New Orleans has confirmed the truthfulness of that quote.
Can you imagine not being able to sleep in the Superdome for
fear that someone might try to rape your daughter if she went
to the restroom in the middle of the night?
We are people of both dignity and depravity. The hurricane
blew back more than roofs; it blew the mask off the nature
of mankind. The main problem in the world is not Mother
Nature, but human nature. Strip away the police barricades,
blow down the fences, and the real self is revealed. We are
barbaric to the core.
We were born with a me-first mentality. You don't have
to teach your kids to argue. They don't have to be trained
to demand their way. You don't have to show them how to
stomp their feet and pout, it is their nature. indeed it is all of
our nature to do so. "All of us have strayed like sheep. We
have left God's paths to follow our own"
(Isaiah 53:6).
God's chosen word for our fallen condition has three
letters- s-I-n. Sin celebrates the letter in the middle. "I".
Left to our own devices, we lead a godless, out of control
life of " doing what we felt like doing, when we felt
like doing it"
(Ephesians 2:3 MSG).
You don't have to go to New Orleans to see the chaos.
Because of sin, the husband ignores his wife, grown men
seduce the young. The young proposition the old. When
you do what you want and I do what I want, humanity
and civility implodes.
And when the Katrinas of life blow in, our true nature is
revealed and our deepest need is unveiled: a need deeper
than food, more permanent than firm levees. We need, not
a new system, but a new nature. We need to be changed
from the inside out. Which takes us to the third message
of Katrina:
III. The Nature of God's Grace: Inside Out
Much discussion revolves around the future of New
Orleans. Will the city be restored? Repaired? How long
will it take? Who will pay for it? One thing is for certain:
someone has to clean her up.
No one is suggesting otherwise. Everyone knows, someone
has to go in and clean up the mess. That is what God offers
to do with us. He comes into sin-flooded lives and washes
away the old. Paul reflected on his conversion and he wrote:
"He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people,
washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit"
(Titus 3:5).
Our sins stand no chance against the fire hoses of God's
grace. But he does more than cleanse us; he rebuilds us.
In the form of his Holy Spirit, God moves in and starts a
complete renovation project. "God can do anything, you
know -- far more than you could ever imagine or
guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not
by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit
deeply and gently within us."
(Ephesians 3:20 MSG).
And what we can only dream of doing with New Orleans,
God has done with soul after soul, and he will do so with
you, if you let him.
The most disturbing stories from the last week are of
those who refused to be rescued. Those who spent their
final hours trapped in attics and rooms regretting the choice
they'd made. They could have been saved. They could
have gotten out. but they chose to stay. Many paid a
permanent price.
You don't have to pay that price. What rescuers did for
people on the Gulf Coast, God will do for you. He has
entered your world. He has dropped a rope into your
sin-swamped life. He will rescue, you simply need to do
what that little girl did, let him lift you out.
I mentioned my visit to Antioch Baptist Church last
Sunday night. A local minister, Pastor L. A. Williams
gave a message on this one verse: "But Noah found
grace in the eyes of the Lord."
(Gen. 6:8).
The minister helped us see all the things Noah could not
find because of the flood. He could not find his neighborhood.
He could not find his house. He could not find the comforts
of home or the people down the street--there was much he
could not find. But what he could find made all the difference.
Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
Noah found grace in the eyes of God.
If you have everything and no grace, you have nothing.
If you have nothing but grace, you have everything.
Have you found grace? If not, I urge you to do what that
little girl told us she did. When the rescuer appeared on her
porch, she grabbed him, closed her eyes, and held on.
That's all you need to do. And if you never have, and
would like to, I urge you to reach for the hand of your
rescuer, Jesus Christ.
Your Redeemer lives, too. This hurricane was his tool
to get your attention. Trust in Him while you still can.
Max Lucado
© 2005
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