by Jeff Ritchie
My wife and I live in Jacksonville, Florida. Along with thousands of other Floridians, we evacuated as Hurricane Irma bore down on Florida a few weeks ago. Returning after the hurricane, we found that our home was spared; electricity was back on, and the neighbors who had not evacuated had already cleaned the debris from all the yards of the houses on our street. We were the fortunate ones. Others in Jacksonville and other parts of Florida were not so fortunate. Neither were far too many people in Texas and in several Caribbean countries who will be spending years getting their lives back in order.
Last week on The Outreach Foundation’s Facebook page we posted this prayer request regarding hurricanes Harvey and Irma, “Please join us in praying that relief efforts will restore lives and that we will ultimately see the good from these events.” I started thinking about what “the good from these events” might look like. And the image of a magnifying glass came to me.
In disasters we experience great loss – the destruction of property, the loss of irreplaceable parts of our past, and we mourn even as we wonder about the future. At the same time, however, we find surprising, unexpected goodness, love and support that the disaster, or rather, the response to the disaster, magnifies.
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