The Flood

Yesterday, I drove my soon-to-be fifteen-year-old son to John Knox Ranch in the Hill Country of Texas, where he'll be for the next two weeks doing leader training.  

He has been going to John Knox Ranch since he was in the third grade, at the age of nine.  

As we drove, we talked about his excitement at being back at camp, and what he hoped to get out of it, and we also talked about the recent floods that have claimed over 80 lives so far, including so many eight and nine year-old girls from a summer camp, not far from where we were driving.  

I could tell that he was holding those two things in tension — the joy he felt at being somewhere he loved, and also the sadness over the tragedies he'd been reading about on social media.  

At one point, he said to me, "Imagine being a counselor for all those little kids, and having to take care of them, and then losing some of them."  As he said this, I could tell he'd been thinking deeply about this, as he was about to be trained to be one of those counselors one day. 

I am glad that he feels things deeply, both joy and sorrow.  I'm also glad that he will be in a place where he will be nurtured by loving people who dedicate their lives to helping kids realize their true potential and discovering God's purposes for their lives.  

But as I drove home, I could not help but think about the scores of parents who had dropped their own kids off at camp earlier this summer, and who never saw them alive again.  

And then my mind turned to the many others who were washed away in the flood, entire families gone in an instant, and so many still missing.  

One of my church members sorrowfully informed us yesterday that his only daughter and her stepchildren were swept away in one of the floods that occurred north of Austin.  Another told me her grandson lost a friend and a classmate.  

I have been holding space for grief, and also having some hard conversations with God about all of it, and I can feel the weight of it on me this morning.  

I've told my church many times before that God does not cause all things, but God is present in all things.  But even that seems a hard notion to hold on to in the wake of such incredible tragedy.  

As I write this, I can see blue sky peeking through the grey clouds.  The sun is shining through the leaves on the trees outside my window, flickering, momentary, but still there and filled with the promise that the darkness cannot overcome the light. 

Last night, we received an email from the camp director of John Knox Ranch, who informed us that they had received a good bit of rain after all the campers had been checked in. However, after the storm passed, they saw a double rainbow in the sky. 

In the book of Genesis, at the end of the story of the Great Flood, God tells Noah that the rainbow would be a sign of hope, a sign that destruction would not have the last word.  

When I read that email, a song by the band U2 drifted into my head, particularly the last stanza before the final chorus.  

"And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth.  After the flood, all the colors came out. It was a beautiful day..." 

May the God of hope surround us in our moments of doubt and grief.  May we realize anew how precious and brief our lives are.  

May we discover that when the clouds clear, and the flood waters subside, we are held in a promise that love is stronger even than death, and that all the colors that come out bear witness to this love.  

And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us all, now and forever. Amen.