Written by Clint Twedt-Ball
|
02 June 2011
Posted in
Blogs
Received a phone call from a friend over in western Iowa tonight. He was calling to talk about disaster response in relation to the flooding that is occurring over on the Missouri River. I had no idea that they were talking about the potential of some neighborhoods being flooded for months. I remember how long a few days felt here in Cedar Rapids. I also remember going to New Orleans to learn about flood recovery and them talking about flooding in neighborhoods lasting for a month. What a frustrating and agonizing trauma to go through.
At a deep level, I have to believe that we are doing this to ourselves. As we put more moisture in the air through global warming, it has to go somewhere and weather patterns have to change. I am not a doomsday theorist, but I do believe we need to see all of this as a wake up call. We need to change the way we live, develop ways to consume less of everything and begin to seriously think about how to re-make our cities, our farms, our culture. The other option seems to be ongoing trauma and disaster response as the earth tries to cope and overcome what we are doing to her. I pray that we will learn. Right now, regardless of long-term lessons that need to be learned, I also pray for those in harms way. It is the most vulnerable in society that get hurt the worst when disaster strikes. I hope we are able to respond in a way that cares for those Jesus called the "least of these" in Matthew 25.
