Flood Waters

"The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord, over mighty waters.  The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.  The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; the Lord sits enthroned as king forever.  May the Lord give strenth to his people!  May the Lord bless his people forever!" -Psalm 29: 3-4, 10-11.

Tuesday morning began with a surprise as I found that water had leaked into our basement fellowship hall, covering roughly two thirds of the floor.  This is a problem that has occurred since I arrived, and we have spent time and money attempting to solve the problem, but with five inches of rain in twenty-four hours, even the additional precautions did not hold up. 

As a result I was walking through puddles, surveying the damage to the merchandise for our church mission yard sale scheduled for early October.  It need not be said that this was not how I was predicting I would spend my Tuesday.

At 8:30 I began making phone calls, to the Building and Grounds Committee Chair and to another elder on that committee who works on caulking and waterproofing.  Within twenty minutes they had both arrived with mops and shop vacs, and after a short survey of the damage, they began moving boxes and cleaning up the water.

Within the next thirty minutes, an additional six people arrived, more shop vacs, more available hands.  There was no sense of panic, no chaos, just people with their hands down and hands at work throwing away soaking cardboard, sorting through merchandise that could dry out or needed to be thrown away.  They began moving boxes to the upper floor to protect them from any future flooding issues. 

I realized rather quickly that my schedule for the day was not going to be terribly interrupted because the members of the church had sprung into action to take care of the problem.  Because of their efforts, I was able to continue preparation for Sunday worship, trusting that our water problem would be cared for.

Jokingly I came down into the fellowship hall to check on the progress and read to the volunteers the words of the Psalm posted above.  It was to provide a moment of humor, and also offered me a time to offer thanks for their immediate and thorough response to the need.

I do think, however, that this Psalm reminds us of the ambiguous nature of water.  Water is necessary for life, for cleaning and drinking.  We need it to water crops for food production.  It provides an element of beauty when we sit by a lake, float down a river, or gaze out at the horizon over the vast ocean.

Water can also be destructive, causing flooding that does significantly more damage than our flooded basement, destroying homes and lives.  It destroys family treasures, photographs and artifacts that we have saved from important moments in our lives.  Too much water can drown our crops or our yards. 

Water is a necessary resouce to life but it can also destroy life.

Maybe this Psalm can serve as a reminder that our God is not an ambiguous resource who randomly causes good or evil in life.  Our God actually sits enthroned over the waters, forming the world out of the chaos of the waters, bringing new life through the waters of the Red Sea and the waters of our baptism, and promises a river of life at the end of history where the throne of God will sit.

And so when basements flood, we do not fear that we are at the mercy of a random natural element that can create or destroy life.  We do not inhabit a world only of chaos and random chance. 

We trust in a God who provides through the means of water and who heals when the waters cause destruction.  Therefore, when basements flood, God sends faithful saints to clean out boxes and mop up messes, because God's purposes will not be ultimately thwarted by weather patterns. 

We do not, therefore, seek to interpret weather patterns, floods and droughts, as signs of God's abandonment or blessing.  We know that the rains fall on both the just and the unjust (Matt 5:45).  Instead we place our trust in a God who rules over the waters, who provides both the natural as well as the human resources we need.  This is the God who can create the world out of nothing and who brings life out of death.

I am grateful this day for the saints who witnessed to the power of our God through their humble and tireless service to make sure that God's purposes of mission were able to continue despite natural set backs in our daily routine.