We can see clearly now . . .

Saturday. Sofa. Coffee.

(Warning. While I really wanted to be funny this morning, it just didn't happen. A bit preachy. Turn back now if you wish. Just needed to hear it myself, I suppose)

You can't rest on your laurels, or your piled up oak branches at least a three point line away from the basketball goal.

It has been a week since the chain saw excursion to clean up tornado damage. I won't write anymore about what happened on that one, at least on the blog. A new rule for myself. I won't post about any tornado relief work older than one week. You, dear readers, have been nominated to be my accountability group for this issue. We need to stay in this for as long as it takes.

Last week we broke out the bright green disaster relief shirts supplied by the United Methodist North Alabama Conference to wear on such trips. I had three stuffed back in the closet. Two of them were customized with white spots created by the bleach we sprayed on the stripped framing of houses on the coast after Katrina. That was five years ago. There is still plenty of work to do there, even now. And we need to be praying that there won't be massively more by next week as flood waters roll down the Mississippi toward the Delta.

During times like these I have a desire to escape to "normal", whatever that is.

But maybe times like these are normal.

We just can't avoid it anymore. Huge disasters have always happened. We just couldn't see them. What we don't see we can ignore.

In my faith, Jesus talked a lot about eyes. Some were blind. Some were just closed. Jesus almost never changed the circumstances surrounding people. But he was all the time changing folks to help them see their circumstances.

Some disasters are sudden and awesome, like tornadoes, earthquakes, and sunamis. Some move painfully slower, like approaching hurricanes in the gulf or floodwaters advancing down the Mississippi.

And some disasters move so slowly we hardly notice them at all. Poverty, malnutrition, oppression.

Our eyes have been splattered with mud and dirt from whirling winds and raging waters, but as the mud is dissolved with our tears of frustration and sadness, perhaps the blessing is that now we can see.

So now, maybe we should pray for the other most common miracle from the gospel stories of Jesus. That we are no longer paralyzed. That we will lie still no longer. That we will walk.

That we will get up and go.

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