Does God seem to have something against Florida this fall?
The Sunshine State had only begun to recover from its encounter with Hurricane Helene two weeks ago when another monster cyclone formed in the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Milton is ravaging central Florida even as this reflection arrives in your inbox, delivering violent winds, relentless rain, tornadoes, and record storm surges.
Tampa hasn’t seen anything like Milton for at least 100 years. It may well live up to the moniker Storm of the Century. Our prayers are raining down today and for many days to come.
Comparisons will be made to a late October collision of multiple weather systems in 1991 in the North Atlantic. It wasn’t the strongest storm that year, nor did it cause the most damage or take the most lives. For a few years it didn’t even have a name. It was known as the No-Name Storm or the Halloween Gale.
But it achieved lasting notoriety when author Sebastian Junger, during a conversation with Boston National Weather Service forecaster Robert Case, decided to call it the Perfect Storm.
Junger’s 1997 book of the same name, followed by the 2000 movie starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg, chronicled the intersecting stories of some of those threatened by the storm's high winds and towering waves.
The fishing boat Andrea Gail and its crew of six vanished. Only a few telltale pieces of debris were later found.
What kinds of conditions did the Gail face? A buoy off the coast of Nova Scotia reported a wave height of 100.7 feet, the highest wall of water ever measured in that part of the Atlantic.
Fishing boats, container ships, and pleasure craft weren’t the only vessels facing disaster.
A New York Air National Guard HH-60 helicopter with a crew of five, including two pararescuemen, headed out into the maelstrom. The copter, searching for a floundering Japanese boat, became lost in the storm, ran out of fuel, and ditched in the ocean not far from Long Island.
The Coast Guard Vessel Tamaroa braved the same desperate conditions in an attempt to save them. One of the pararescuemen, a young father named Sgt. Alden “Rick” Smith, was never found.
The Perfect Storm was a perfect nightmare because it overwhelmed the capacities of our most advanced technology. Those in the middle of it remember it with awe.
Perhaps most ominous of all: What happens when the rescuers need to be rescued?
We know that tragedy befell at least five first responders as they worked to save victims of Helene. Two North Carolina firefighters lost their lives when their engine was struck by a falling tree. A law officer in Georgia, Sgt. Michelle Quintero, drowned when her car was caught in a wall of water from a bursting dam. Her brother, a sheriff’s deputy in the same county, acknowledged that when she took the oath she knew might one day “have to give it all.” “She was my everything,” he said.
What can we say about those who are called to run towards danger instead of running away?
That same question lies at the heart of the biblical story.
According to the Jewish scriptures, God chose a man named Abraham. God promised to bless Abraham and his family, and through their descendants – who came to be known as Israel – God promised to bless the whole world.
God would save humanity, in other words, through the Jews.
Unfortunately the Jews found themselves facing one crisis after another, the great majority of them self-inflicted.
They routinely thumbed their noses at God’s commandments. Their kings flunked Spirituality 101. Their leaders succumbed to envy, greed, and fear. God ultimately allowed Israel to be overwhelmed by its enemies. The Jews went into exile. The very people whom God had called to deliver his message of mercy and grace stood in deep need of mercy and grace.
What happens when the rescuers need to be rescued?
God’s solution was to send The Rescuer – a Jew named Jesus of Nazareth.
That very old story is still playing out today.
The Church – the New Israel – has been called by God to save humanity. Followers of Jesus are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
But the very people charged with displaying God's mercy are sometimes foolish and cruel. Those who are supposed to point the way can become hopelessly lost. It’s become fashionable for atheists to say that they will believe in a Redeemer when his followers started acting as if they are redeemed.
God seems to have ensured that we're all on a level playing ground.
Even those called to be rescuers need to be rescued. Those who speak most earnestly about the goodness of God's grace will themselves need to be grace-consumers all their lives.
We will never outgrow, in other words, our need of God's forgiveness and intervention.
That's God's perfect solution in the midst of life's next perfect storm.
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