Dirty Feet

Lent's nearly over.  Not driving myself, but riding with my commuter husband, I entered the all-night coffee/breakfast place where he drops me off in the morning. People whom one sees at 6:30am in an all-night dive are those who have been up all night.  This morning I saw a long-haired, unkempt man working a cross word puzzle.  His feet were swollen and dirty, shod only in deteriorating flip-flops.  He got up to go the restroom, and when he returned, he found his coffee cup gone, taken by the bus boy who probably thought he had left.  Angry words, directed at no one.  A waitress finally came over to him, to see why he was making so much noise.  She offered a new cup; he angrily refused.  I kept looking at his feet, feet that Jesus would have washed, but I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

I wonder if he knew how much he meant to me this morning.  I wonder if he was an angle, sent by God to remind me of my own dirty feet.

The Wind/The Spirit

United Methodist Church, West Liberty KY [FEMA photo]

Can someone really "pray away" a tornado?  I spent last Wednesday through Monday (March 7-12) in Eastern Kentucky, visiting the counties devastated by the outbreak of deadly tornadoes there on Feb 29 and March 2.  A local woman, caught on video "praying away" the tornado from her house, has become a local celebrity.  The video has gone viral, and has been picked up by several news organizations covering the destruction near West Liberty, Kentucky, and edited into their own video stories.  The woman happens to be a neighbor of the man who is the Clerk of Session at Ezel Presbyterian Church.  (Ezel is about 15 miles west of West Libery.) When I met with him, he didn't claim that his own house was spared because of her prayers. The pastor of Ezel Presbyterian Church doesn't claim that either.  Instead, the small congregation is concentrating on their own and their neighbors' recovery, and vigorously objecting to anyone who claims to know the "reason" why storms destroyed some (the Methodist Church for example) and not others. 
There isn't anyone in all of the close-knit communities of Eastern Kentucky who hasn't been affected by the storms, whether or not their own possessions were damaged or destroyed.  Disasters are like that.  In the midst of tragedy, the face of God comes from the face of friends, neighbors, colleagues, volunteers--anyone who shows up with an offer of care.  We can't claim to know why God allows these happenings, but we can stand in solidarity with those who have lost so much and declare that God certainly knows what it means to suffer. We know this because of Jesus.

Now a challenge

The first week of my car fast was uneventful--more car pooling and riding the bus from the Ballston Metro to the church.  Then I went on vacation to Florida, and only drove a rental car with my husband.  Since it wasn't my car, I thought I was probably being faithful. But still...there is the second-guessing, the pondering...What does it mean to be faithful in this?  Should I have given up my vacation, too?

I really should have anticipated that tornado season would start early.  Now the real challenge...I have to go to Kentucky to respond to the tornado devastation there.  That's not quite right.  I don't have to go; I've promised to go when called, and now I've been called.  So there you have it, another dilemma.  Of course I will have to rent a car to do the job of traveling around, being with people, surveying the area and finding out how Presbyterian Disaster Assistance might be of help.  There's really no other way to do it.