I feel detached, worried and at odds. As I write this I am sitting in my car at 7 PM on the campus of Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne on Thursday evening, September 7, 2017. A soft breeze drifts through my open windows. The pond is just to my right front. I have long wanted to come and visit this picturesque campus. Visit the library, maybe sit in the campus cafeteria and listen to the students talk and visit. Just sitting here in my car there are memories everywhere around me. Not that I have ever been on this campus. I haven’t. But it is not that different from the campus Marsha and I spent several years at back in the 1980s. Quiet, peaceful, serene. There are three students, loaded down with books, headed back to the dorms after a late class. I have done that walk. There goes an older man hurrying along. Maybe a professor? Hard to tell. Professor’s don’t necessarily wear suits anymore. If I had chosen the path Dr. Hamrick tried to get me to follow, that older gentleman hurrying along could have been me right now, a professor hustling home after teaching that late class. If I close my eyes and relax my brain, even the breeze smells similar. Except…….

The breeze in Florida smells different. It’s been well over 30 years since I walked the paths of that campus. This moment in time should be sweet with long ago memories. The problem is, Hurricane Irma, already being called the biggest Atlantic storm in recorded history, is due to hit land late Saturday/early Sunday. We have friends scattered everywhere in the state. People are on the move, evacuating their homes. Some are securing their churches or businesses. Communications are limited. People are being asked to not use their cell phones so emergency communications can be maintained. When the recent hurricane hit Texas, I was concerned. A high school friend lived in the path. A member of Joel Osteen’s church, David was there when they finally opened the doors to let displaced people in. David’s caring heart didn’t let him stay safe at home. But he was one friend and the storm, beyond the rain and storm surge, was only a medium storm. Irma, on the other hand, is a monster and is threatening the place that used to be home for us. I used to pastor there. Friends are there. One of Marsha’s best friends lives in Miami Lakes. One of my best friends lives in Bradenton. The winds are approaching tornado speeds, but with a hurricane the winds last for hours and hours before it moves on, while a tornado is here and gone. It is going to be a really bad storm.

Will the storm hit and then move up the Atlantic coast of Florida? Or will it eat up the Keys and then turn north and go up the Gulf coast? It doesn’t really matter. Irma is huge. It doesn’t matter which coast it attacks, it will stretch across the state, side to side. Unless it crosses the state and hits somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. Texas again? Louisiana? The Alabama/Florida panhandle coast? Mississippi? People will die. Usually when people die in a hurricane they have been careless or live close to the ocean and ignore the evacuation orders. But this storm, well, the winds will be as big a problem as the water. Anyone in the path will be affected. Unless it makes an unexpected turn to the northeast in the next few hours, there will be real misery.

We are an amazing people. We think we have everything under control. But we don’t. And don’t call it Mother Nature. God, not Mother Nature, put everything in motion. Hurricanes and other big storms do much good. They clean the air, they bring much water that the earth needs, they readjust the ecosystem. But they also bring the stupid out in people. Especially when those people decide to have hurricane parties and such. On the other hand, they also bring out the best in some people. People who would otherwise be in conflict over politics or religion or race or whatever, will come together and work together to save others, to reach out to one another.

When 9/11 happened in New York City sixteen years ago, the thing that really grabbed me was not the people running from the collapsing buildings and that huge cloud of roiling dust, but rather, the people running towards the collapsing buildings. Over the next week we will hear such tales. Courage, self-sacrifice, selflessness. The news media will do their best to show us the looting and the selfish acts of certain people, but we will see heroism, too. The best of America.

I have just taken a short break from writing this blog to take a text from a girl who used to be in my Youth Group in Miami. Not a girl now. Her youngest daughter, Briana, is 24. She is stuck in Miami, alone. Her Mom is vacationing in Boston and she cannot get home to be with her daughter. She is frantic. She reached out to me to pray for her daughter, which I will. In a way, that feels nice. It has been three decades or more since I was her Youth pastor. On the other hand, I am worried about Briana.

It is now 7:43 PM on the Concordia Campus. It is growing darker. My keyboard is disappearing right before my eyes. I am going to put this away and remember other such nights, long ago and far away, and I am going to take some time and pray for friends and others in the path of this storm. If you would, please lift them up in prayer, too.

Blessings.