Of Hurricane Relief and Of Doing Something

Certainly, there is nothing on our minds this week more than the crises facing thousands in and around New Orleans. Many of us who want to help, are thinking “how can we help?” The urgency of the needs of people stranded at the Superdome, and those isolated in what is left of their water filled homes in all affected areas, strikes us in a personal way, for all we in North Carolina can complain about is that gas prices are higher than ever, leaving us feeling completely guilty because we can get in our cars and drive to the grocery store, knowing there will be groceries to buy when we get there. We have clean running water for drinking and cooking, we take showers whenever we want to, and we can flush our toilets because they work just fine. Our pets are safely sleeping on the floor at our feet, and our children are tucked in their warm and dry beds. We retired each evening this week in our own homes, and watched the replay of the hurricane devastation and its aftermath, shaking our heads, feeling sorry for the victims, praying for them, but doing little else.

It's time to do something. Many will do something. They will donate to the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Humane Society, Feed the Children and other organizations set up to give aid to countries and communities at times like these. Many will look to their churches or organizations linked by their churches like the United Methodist Committee on Relief, Church World Service, and Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Fund, B'nai B'rith International, and United Jewish Communities for taking their monetary donations and sending it where it is needed, (clicking on any of these links will take you to their homepages if you would like to help). Still others, all across our nation, will open their homes to strangers, feeding and clothing them until they can start over on their own. The latter I think will be the more humane.

Helping others out in their hour of need is often a very personal matter. One doesn’t have to discuss with others the degree to which she helps. I know many good folks who prefer to remain anonymous when they help out with a financial or material gift. I myself prefer anonymity when making monetary gifts. I know my church will be involved, and it is through my church that I will give because I know that 100% of the donations will go to those devastated by the hurricane.

It’s really a shame to watch the news and know that our great country leaps into action to help disaster victims on the other side of the world, but when our own people suffer, relief efforts are begun late, leaving people dying in their wheelchairs. I don’t understand why or how that happened, but it’s painful to watch and listen to the stories of the poorest and the least protected as they make their appeal for food, water, and shelter while standing in water up to their ankles and or knees. It’s been four days of waiting, and help from the National Guard started arriving Friday. I am sorry for those people in the Gulf who have lost their homes and family members, their cars, their pets, their entire neighborhoods, their schools, stores, nursing homes, and so on. Sorry that something wasn’t in place to help them before it happened.

It’s not like we didn’t know it could happen. Just last year I saw a documentary, on PBS I think, that showed a very realistic computer generated graphic simulation of what could happen if a tidal wave or a huge hurricane should ever hit the New Orleans area directly. The devastation was much worse than what we see with Hurricane Katrina. However, even the documentary spoke about the city preparing for such a disaster, and evacuation was one of the preparations. But my question is, why wasn’t a relief/rescue/assistance plan set into action before the hurricane hit? The sophistication of hurricane tracking these days allows for pretty accurate predictions for timing and location of landfall. I watched for a few days prior to landfall as the hurricane developed and meteorologists were predicting its path and strength with certain accuracy. Seems like our government could have begun mobilizing sources of water and food, blankets, beds, tents, port-a-potties, anything to serve the basic needs of those having to survive without electricity and clean water. It’s more than disappointing to know this happened in a country as well stocked and well organized as ours.

The truth is, the federal government cannot take care of everything all of the time. That is why it is important for neighbors to help neighbors. Churches are always the first to jump in and help people in regions overwhelmed by natural disasters. It is the most important commandment of our Christian faith, and of other faiths as well, to love one’s neighbor, in times of distress and sorrow. Loving means more than having good feelings toward a friend or even an enemy. It means taking care of someone who is unable to take care of themselves, for whatever reason. It even means taking care of someone who has offended us.

Americans will pitch in and help the stricken people of the Gulf Coastal communities, but certainly the folks waiting in New Orleans need it now. Their situation is dire, they are dying from health related conditions or illnesses. Many folks need medication, babies need their formula, everyone else needs food. They are outraged. I would be too if I were having to deal with the unhealthy, filthy conditions they are now living in.

The kind of help these people need is more than a tent and a truck load of food, even more than ice and a week's supply of fresh water. They need a place to live, a place to start over. We can see from the pictures on the internet and on the news that the residents of the coastal areas of the Gulf have lost everything. There are no homes left for them to go back to, the streets of their cities are covered in mountains of splintered and broken wood, cars, boats, and all their furnishings and possessions. Sending them off to a shelter in another city is only a temporary solution. Helpful, but temporary.

What the stranded and homeless need is for Americans to open their homes and hearts, to bring these broken families into their homes. They'll need to be fed, they'll need to recover from all that has happened, from all that they have lost. I'm thinking many churches are already doing this at local levels.

We have got to start taking better care of our neighbors. I don't know how many churches exist in our country, but I wonder if every church adopted one family (bigger churches could adopt two families), pitched in and provided a home and necessary furnishings, food, etc, that the whole of displaced persons sheltered in the Superdome could be taken care of in a caring, neighborly way. Eventually, that family could get back on their feet.

For some, it might be an improvement compared to what they had before Katrina took away their homes. We have all heard that those citizens who had money were able to high tail it out of the area when they heard the evacuation orders. I'm even sure that some started for safer havens before the order was given. If my family were living there, we would have been one of those evacuating families. We would have loaded our dogs and all the clothes and food we could pack into the car, picked up our son, and headed north.

Look at who was left behind: the poor, the elderly, the sick, the crippled... the helpless. These are the people Jesus commands us to take care of: the least of these. Who can be more in the "least" category than the people who were already downtrodden, broken, lost, alone, forgotten, neglected, hungry, and sick? Does it matter if they didn't have jobs before the hurricane happened? For some it does. Does it matter if they were on welfare before the hurricane? For some it does. Does it matter that many of the victims of Hurricane Katrina lived at poverty level, and didn't have much to lose, but it was all that they had? It does matter to a lot of folk. Are we only going to put out our hands in giving to those who are like us?

It shouldn't matter to a Christian. Christians have many favorite Old and New Testament stories to recall in times of trial to help them struggle through life's tragedies and challenges. One of these stories is the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Replace the character of the robbers who set upon the man and stripped him of his clothes, robbed him, beat him, and left him laying on the road half dead, with the character of Hurricane Katrina, who literally did this to the people in its path. Of the various passers-by who saw the man laying on the road, injured and bleeding, helpless and homeless, only the Samaritan took pity and gave aid to the half-dead stranger. He didn't just provide water and bind up his wounds. He took him to an Inn, and gave money for the man's expected care and needs. At the end of the story, Jesus tells the young man who questioned him to "Go and do likewise." It is asked of us now. It is asked of me. Will I respond as the Good Samaritan?

I hope to hear stories of charity in the wake of this most destructive storm a year from now. I hope to hear stories of courage and perseverance, for that is what we are made of. I hope to hear stories of recovery and regeneration, renewal and rebuilding, not only in the physical, architectural sense, but also in the personal, communal, and spiritual sense as well. I hope to hear that Americans, Christian or Non-Christian, reached out to help "the least of these" in our own country.