In nearly thirty years of living in Florida I have experienced many hurricanes. As Hurricane Dorian threatens us I reflect on what I have written about them in the past. On the evening of September 5, 2004, my wife and I were watching the progress of Hurricane Frances on the television in our home when the power failed. Left in the darkness we listened to the wind roaring over us, the trees thudding against the roof, and the crack of limbs as they fell on the house. It was a long night. When daylight arrived I found that our front entrance was almost covered by two trees that lay on our roof creating a forest-like tunnel into the yard. The driveway and road was littered with branches. Trees were down everywhere. Despite appearances, our damage was cosmetic compared to others down state. Hurricane Frances knocked out power to more than a million homes and businesses, sustained winds of 105 mph, and devastated most of Florida. It came ashore near Palm Beach and, after crossing the state to the Gulf, it turned north. It came ashore again at St. Mark’s, south of Tallahassee, and tore through Alabama and Georgia spawning 100 tornadoes. It cost the state nearly $9 billion. That year the state of Florida also felt the wrath of Hurricanes Charley and Wilma.
Hurricane Katrina, on August 29, 2005, hit the Gulf coast and devastated over 100 miles through a storm surge that caused catastrophic damage along the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, including the cities of Mobile, Biloxi, Waveland, Gulfport, Slidell, and, of course, New Orleans. Katrina is estimated to be responsible for $75 billion in damages, making it the costliest hurricane in United States history. The storm killed at least 1,604 people and made tens of thousands homeless.
Hurricanes are uncontrollable. No one can prevent them from happening. They are part of tropical weather patterns. If you want to live on or near the Gulf coast or the Atlantic Ocean, or anywhere in the state of Florida, you risk being hit by a hurricane. Insurance rates in Florida have risen astronomically to cover hurricane damage. There is controversy about whether insurance companies will cover homeowners for flood damage. Wind, rain, and storm surges which cause flooding, can destroy any dwellings, unless they have been built to withstand the worst that nature can inflict.
Hurricanes are a metaphor for the worst that life can throw at us. Natural disasters happen. We cannot prevent them occurring. In addition, we are threatened by a variety of evils: illness, disease, poverty, accidents, crime, financial reverses, family dysfunction, and litigious partners, enemies, and former employees.
Prolific author, Stephen King, in June 1999 was taking a walk down the road near his house in Maine when he was hit by a van driven by Bryan Smith, who was distracted by his dog. King’s right leg was broken in nine places, his right hip was fractured, his spine was chipped in eight places, four ribs were broken, and a laceration in his scalp took twenty or thirty stitches. When he set out on that walk he had no idea that he would be facing months of surgeries and rehabilitation. Accidents happen to us over which we can have no control, and no premonition. No matter how careful we may be we have no influence over how other people can behave. How can we cope with disasters that may happen to us?
Families that suffer from a debilitating disease afflicting the bread winner and parent in the prime of life have to cope with totally different expectations. Spouse and children have to care for an invalid. Relatives, friends and colleagues, embarrassed by their misfortune, may abandon them. Radically reduced financial resources cause anxiety. Every one in the family is affected by the changed circumstances. Their prospects are permanently altered by the medical catastrophe which afflicted their parent. No one could have imagined such a thing happening.
We are all living longer. We cannot anticipate everything that may happen to us. We try to plan for the future, to take care of ourselves, but there is so much that we cannot prevent. We take out all kinds of insurance policies: life insurance to take care of our spouse and family, to pay off debt for our survivors; home and flood insurance to give us capital to rebuild in case of disaster; supplementary medical insurance to ensure that we can afford the best of treatment; long term care insurance to provide for professional caregivers so that we are not left to the mercy of others, and that we are not a burden to our family. But there is no insurance that will compensate us for the stress of having to cope with the problems of our children and grandchildren, for the guilt we feel about our compassion fatigue in caring for elderly and disabled relatives and friends, for the fear we have that we will outlive our financial resources, for the panic we face in finding adequate, reliable and trustworthy help in maintaining our home and property so that we can remain independent, in the horror of no longer being able to drive our own car and therefore having to rely on others to get around, for the dread we have of losing our mind, or our sight, or our mobility, and being warehoused in an Alzheimer’s unit.
What is the worst that can happen to us? What form does evil take in our minds? What wakes us up in the middle of the night? What is it that causes despair and depression? Is it the prospect of dying? Is it losing control over our lives, over our bodily functions? Is it being rejected, forgotten and unloved? Is it having to go through death alone? Is it the trepidation of not knowing what is on the other side of death? Is it the fear of judgment, of being called to account for the way we have lived? Is it the feeling that we have not accomplished much in life, that we have been a failure? Is it the possibility that we have been wrong about everything we have believed? How can we survive in a world in which there is much to terrorize us, and fill us with such apprehension?
Apprehensiveness is an uneasiness or anxiety which is an acute sense of impending or unspecified disaster. Often it is experienced as a vague or undirected feeling of unease with no immediate cause. It is a fear of the future. Fundamentally it is a spiritual problem, for it describes our isolation, our vulnerability, our helplessness, our sense of being alone to cope with whatever life may throw at us. Our reaction or response to the hurricanes of life depends upon what resources we can deploy to support and protect us. No anti-anxiety medication is going to solve the problems we face in the long run. They may assist us to get through a bad patch but they will not heal our basic need to become able to handle the future.
The Bible is a sort of hurricane survival kit. Just as you need basic essentials, such as water, flashlights, batteries etc. to ride out a storm, you also need spiritual resources in order to survive the hurricanes of life. To survive a hurricane you have to know what you are dealing with. You need an accurate picture of what it is, the strength of its winds, where it is going, what are its coordinates etc. In terms of life that means that you need to have a clear picture of what constitutes the evils you may have to face, what is the nature of evil, and what various commentators have to say about it. Then you have to know how you can protect yourself from what it can do to you.
The spiritual resources are described by St. Paul as the Armor of God in Ephesians 6:10-18, and by Jesus in what has become known as the Lord’s Prayer. The description of evil, and the armor of God, naturally leads to prayer. Jesus supplied the twelve disciples with his pattern of prayer for their guidance and protection. We can do no less in our need if we are to survive the hurricanes of life and become more than conquerors through him who loved us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?….No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God, that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39)
Excerpted from SURVIVING HURRICANES, Ted Schroder, pp.1-6
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