Marching In

Six members and friends of our parish spent the fourth week of October in New Orleans. As part of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana’s relief effort, we helped gut and rebuild homes damaged during Hurricane Katrina more than two years ago.

Some facts: Katrina flooded More than 100,000 homes. 80 percent of the city flooded. More than 1,600 people died. When a barge broke off its moorings, it exploded a 300-foot hole in the levee protecting the 9th Ward. A 30-foot wall of mud, water and debris slammed into one of the poorest sections of the city.

It’s impossible to describe the devastation adequately. Huge sections of the city remain virtually empty today – the houses are there, but people don’t have the resources to rebuild. Trailers take up many front yards. The Lower 9th Ward looks like a bomb went off. Imagine your entire neighborhood with two or three houses left; the rest only slabs and vacant lots, front steps leading to nowhere, scattered debris. That’s what it’s like in the Lower 9th – only worse.

Though it is slowly recovering and rebuilding, this great U.S. city still suffers. But it’s not suffering alone, and it’s not suffering unaided. There are dozens of organizations involved in the rebuilding process. As you might expect, Habitat for Humanity has a large presence there. Every mainline church has teams on the ground. They are responding as Christians do: not running from suffering, but entering it.

We’re promised that that is where God is to be found. I haven’t spoken about this with the individual members of our team, but I think I can speak for all of us in saying that we experienced the truthfulness of that promise last week. If you want a deeper relationship with God, service like this is a good place to start. We don’t have to be physically strong or have a lot of stamina. We just need willingness to help in any way we can. God takes it from there.