Hurricane Harvey and Overwhelming Challenges
One of the greatest movies of all time was about one of the greatest events of our lifetime. In Apollo 13, a spacecraft with three astronauts is hurtling toward the moon at nearly 25,000mph. The rocket is hundreds of thousands of miles from the earth when suddenly an explosion occurs.
The scene in the cockpit is chaotic. Debris is floating outside their window, alarms are sounding, oxygen levels are dropping, heartbeats are racing, adrenaline is surging. With their lives in danger, an astronaut calmly breaks radio silence to utter those iconic words: “Houston, we have a problem…” With the world watching, the experts at NASA, in Houston, skillfully guide the astronauts home to safety. The Apollo 13 mission became a testament to human ingenuity and courage.
Once again, all eyes are trained upon Houston, as a far graver calamity has unfolded [This is a reference to the flooding of Houston and Hurricane Harvey]. It makes me think of a story in John’s gospel, when a mass of people in grave need descend upon Jesus. Their hungry and tired and broken. Their emotionally spent, feeling harassed by circumstances beyond their control, feeling hopeless about the future. They turn to Jesus, because they’ve seen signs that he has the power to heal.
But then Jesus turns to his disciples and asks, “Where can we buy bread for all these people to eat?” One of Jesus’ disciples Philip was like, “What are you looking at me for? It would take more than half a year’s wages just to buy enough break for each one to have a single bite!” But the Bible says Jesus was just messing with his disciples. He was “testing them”. He “already had in mind what he was doing to do.” (John 6)
Next Sunday we’re officially beginning a series we’re calling IMPACT. Everyone gets excited about the idea of making an impact. But then there are these moments, like in Houston, like in John 6, when God checks our ego, and he tests us, and he says, “So you want to make a difference… I dare you to even try apart from me!” Phillip probably used some rudimentary math to calculate the impact he could make alone, without God. At best, he concluded he could maybe give people a tiny bite of food. Certainly not enough to satisfy their full needs.
Some would do well just to feed and take care of themselves… let alone take care of others! I’ve been in meetings here at Lakeside where we’ve had 10-20 of our most godly, caring, loving, generous people in a room… prayerfully collaborating about how best to respond to the needs of a single individual. Sometimes it takes just one high need person to overwhelm a church, much less the needs of a whole crowd, or city or region. We’re fooling ourselves if we think we can have a significant impact apart from Christ Jesus Himself. Apart from Jesus we might be able to leave a good taste in people’s mouth but we’ll fall woefully short of satisfying their deepest hungers.
I want to share a few thoughts this morning an making in impact in the face of the overwhelming, and catastrophic needs we see everywhere around us in this world.
In the face of extreme need... pray fervently.
Now if you are in the midst of calamity, I know how shallow, and hollow it can sound, to encourage someone to pray. People prayed that the storm wouldn’t come in the first place. People prayed that their homes and communities wouldn’t be destroyed in the first place, that the unprecedented 52 inch rainfall wouldn’t come, that the flooding would stop, that the waters would recede. People are praying to be rescued, they’re praying for food and water and shelter.
In his book, “The Spiritual Danger of Doing Good,” Peter Greer of the worldwide charity Hope International tells about the impact overwhelming needs have on those serving as well. He writes about “feeling tired, disappointed, and as if God wasn’t holding up His end of the bargain.” His Christian life “didn’t seem to be working at is was supposed to work.” He thought that he and God had a deal, “what I sow, I reap. What I give, I get in return. When I do good, I get good results.” “But,” he writes, “When the returns weren’t what I had hoped they would be, I was disappointed. Christian karma wasn’t working…”
Seeing the needs of others, can be just as sobering as seeing our own needs. The words of Psalm 13 came to mind this week, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, ‘I have overcome him.’ and my foes will rejoice when I fall.”
In Psalm 13 the Psalmist is concerned about the calamity that besets him, but he’s also concerned about God’s reputation—he fear that his calamity would be an occasion for God’s enemies to mock him, and ridicule him, and scoff at this misfortune. Psalm 13 is only six verses long. In the end, the Psalmist resolves to wait in prayer, to stay in faith. He says, “But God I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.”
There is a temptation to interpret calamity as some verdict on God’s unfailing love… to interpret calamity as a verdict on the certainty of our hope in salvation. The In the midst of the storm, in faith, through prayer, … the Psalmist was able to see the goodness and praiseworthiness of God. Prayer allowed him to see beyond his circumstances.
The Bible says we are to walk by faith, not by sight. What we often “see” is a dark catastrophic crisis. What we often see is overwhelming need. But the reason we pray is that God might give light to our eyes, sound counsel for our hearts, a faith that perseveres and waits, a quiet strength to endure. The Psalmist says, “God has been good to me.” The implication is God hasn’t changed. He is still good, and his goodness will be evidenced yet again if not in new, different, surprising ways. Jesus was testing Phillip as if to say, “this is going to be about what you can/can’t do, but who I am…”
In the face of extreme need... give humbly.
In John 6, as Phillip tries to calculate what it would take in human terms to provide relief to the crowd, the other disciples find a young boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish. The boys lunch is laughably insignificant in the face of such overwhelming need, but its everything the boy has to offer. It’s like the widow’s mite. Everyone’s dropping big bucks in the temple treasury, but all the widow has to give is a tiny coin.
Generosity has less to do with how much is given and everything to do with God’s power to multiply a gift exponentially. God asks us to trust him with all that we have, no matter how insignificant it might seem in the eyes of the world. Let’s see, celebrities were challenging one another to give hundreds of thousands. Then Trump chimed in, and gave one million to relief. But then it was reported Floyd Mayweather was going to give an impressive 200 million! The 200 million proved to be fake news. But even if it wasn’t, 200 million wouldn’t even begin to rebuild a city like Houston!
But what does God do in John 6? He takes what seems insignificant and multiplies it exponentially, so that there is abundantly more than all disciples could ask/imagine.
It’s amazing that given the situation in John 6 Jesus would have even asked for the boy’s fish and bread. He didn’t technically need them, did he? So why does Jesus go through the trouble? And why does he have his twelve disciples distribute the boy’s food, and why are there exactly twelve baskets full of barley loaves to gathered (when it’s all said and done… a basket for each disciple)? And why does Jesus tell the disciples to be careful to gather all the remaining pieces, and to let nothing be wasted?
I think the answer is back in John 6:2. The crowd was following Jesus because they had seen miraculous signs. A sign isn’t the reality in itself. By definition, a sign points to a reality beyond itself. First, the miracles Jesus was performing weren’t the reality in themselves, but they pointed to a greater reality, to that of a God who heals. Second, The bread everyone ate wasn’t the reality in itself, it was a sign, pointing people to the greater reality that Jesus is the bread of life.
Third, Our generosity isn’t the reality in itself. If our generosity were the reality itself, people would look to us for answers, and would never learn to look beyond us to see the living Christ. No, our generosity is a sign that points people to put their trust not in us, but in a God who can provide unimaginably more than all we can ask/imagine!
Fourth, Our prayers aren’t the reality in itself… they aren’t some magic ritual by which we immediately receive all the good we demand, salvation in our way, on our terms. Our prayers are a sign pointing to our utter dependence on God to reveal his own goodness, in his own way, in his time (not our time), according to his perfect will (not our fallible will). So in calamity, whether its our calamity or that of another, we find ourselves praying fervently, and giving humbly.
Let me mention something about giving in the midst of calamity. Take some time to ensure that you’re giving in a way that is actually needed and helpful. Our gut reaction to these things is to assume that people who have lost everything, need everything. With good intentions we send crates of water bottles, bundles of clothing, sacks of toys and household supplies. Sometimes the things that make us feel good to give, accomplish very little good for those in need.
For the majority of people, the most practical, immediate way to respond to Harvey is with cash gifts. Money gives those on the ground maximum flexibility. There are thousands of organizations doing good work. As a church, we would encourage you to give through IDES.org. IDES stands for “International Disaster Emergency Service.” Like the Red Cross they provide direct relief to people in crisis. But unlike the Red Cross, they partner with Christian organizations that additionally minister to people’s souls and point them to faith in Christ. People who have lost everything most need Christ (not only need), and what a powerful thing when we can provide relief + build faith in Christ.
In the face of extreme need... Build Faith
In the midst of calamity pray fervently, give humbly, and thirdly build faith. These past few weeks we’ve been watching highways, bridges, and landmarks washed away. Entire businesses, people’s livelihoods, homes they built, have been destroyed. Beautiful brick homes, luxury homes, luxury automobiles all destroyed and underwater.
With everything stripped away, people have felt fortunate just to get out alive with their loved ones, and of course, their pets. Time and again, one single message has been amplified: The only thing of eternal, irreplaceable value, is a human life… a human soul. What enables a soul to triumph isn’t the abundance of things, but an abundance of faith in Christ.
In John 6 Jesus feeds the crowd. But a strange thing happens. The people say to one another, “This is awesome! Surely this Jesus is a Prophet who has come into the world to give us everything we want and need.” Even after all Jesus had done for them they couldn’t distinguish between the gift and the gift-giver. Jesus immediately detected their motive. They intended to come and make Jesus their king by force! They wanted a king they could manipulate and control to satisfy all their material desires.
So what does Jesus do? He withdraws from the crowd to a mountain by himself! We can gain everything our heart desires in this world but still not have God. Calamity is an occasion for us to realize that at the end of the age, all this stuff gets destroyed anyway, including our own bodies. And at the end of the age what is it that will matter, what is it that will remain and be of eternal importance? Its our soul, it’s the soul of our loved ones, and it will be the gift-giver Himself. God didn’t create us for his gifts, he created us for himself. The gifts aren’t our treasure, our treasure is God himself.
The greatest impact we can make in the midst of calamity to help people see Jesus…