What Kind Of People Ought You To Be

What Kind Of People

Ought You To Be?

Slide Show Of Katrina Devastation

As The Song ‘All I Can Say’ By David Crowder played

This week like so many of you; my eyes, my mind and my heart have been literally flooded with hundreds of disturbing images. The devastation that Hurricane Katrina has brought has been mind boggling. I MEAN – hundreds of thousands of people in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. PEOPLE - who just a mere week ago spent the night in their own homes, slept in their own beds and ate breakfast at their own tables … TODAY – September 4, 2005 have none of that…

I just can’t seem to get those pictures out of my mind. Those images of young and old, black and white, male and female, rich and poor… fleeing their city, trudging threw water, waving sheets and shirts from roof tops, holding their children, waiting on the I-10 overpass for help, flooding into the Superdome, people not knowing what to do - not knowing where to go, houses flooded to the rooftop, people busting through their own roofs to escape the raging waters, houses and businesses leveled by the strong winds of Katrina, people desperately looking for their loved ones, people going without food and without water, people having no place to sleep, no place to go to the bathroom and no where to turn…

AGAIN - those images are burned into my mind. They are so haunting, so disturbing. AND – they are reality for so many people this very morning. We even have a few families in this room right now who are from new Orleans. Let’s take a moment to pray for them…

UNDERSTAND WHEN – things like this happen… We all have questions, a lot of question. Tough questions. QUESTIONS – that we still have EVEN when we come in here. WHY?

• Why – did this happen?

• Why - did God allow it?

• Why – didn’t He stop it?

• Why – were some homes spared and others destroyed?

• Why – did some live and others die?

• Where – was God in all this?

Those are some very real questions… difficult questions, deep and penetrating questions and they are questions that seldom have a simple or satisfying answer… NOW – over the years I’ve gotten a lot older and a little wiser. AND – I am now pretty confident of what my answer is to those questions and to the ones that are just like them (are you ready you may want to write this down). “I Don’t Know.” “I Don’t Know Why.”

NOW – to be honest I used to have a different and strangely enough less satisfying answer… YOU SEE – I used to try to answer the kind of questions that so many have today by saying that we live in a fallen world. A WORLD – where not only do people choose to commit evil acts that hurt other people (like 9/11)… BUT - where creation itself has fallen and is now corrupted by what we call ‘natural’ disasters.

The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

– Romans 8:19-21

BUT – do you know what? Knowing that men can choose to commit evil acts and that creation itself is messed up because of the fall… IS NOT - a very satisfying answer when the flood waters of life are destroying so much of what you hold dear.

LISTEN – if sometimes in life, you want to ask God why, understand you are not alone. God’s people have been asking the creator why ever since time began. The prophet Habakkuk who lived over 2600 years ago asked God why… LISTEN – to what he says to God as he begins his book;

Our LORD, how long must I beg for your help before you listen? How long before you save us from all this violence? Why do you make me watch such terrible injustice? Why do you allow violence, lawlessness, crime, and cruelty to spread everywhere? Laws cannot be enforced; justice is always the loser; criminals crowd out honest people and twist the laws around… Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves? 1:2-4,12

NOW - that’s how Habakkuk begins his book – he begins it with a big WHY? (and if I lived in his sandals, I’d probably ask it to, and so would you) BUT – checkout how he ends his book… Oh man, this is soo good.