August 31
14“The Lord himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.” (Exodus 14:14, Life Application Study Bible)
Blessed Thursday Family. The states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and even North Carolina, are emerging from the aftermath of another devastating hurricane. This one, perhaps guided by the Hand of God, made landfall in “the Nature Coast”, an area of Florida that has not been overdeveloped and turned into a dangerous habitat for mankind. Due to the storm entering an area with millions of acres of uninhabited land, the damage from the storm is not the dramatic destruction a storm of that capacity could have produced. But I do not write this to minimize the damage that has been caused. Our family has two close relatives who had half a foot of water in their home when Tampa Bay flooded due to the combination of high tide, the storm surge, and the incredible amount of rain dropped by Idalia. I know there has been life-changing damage done to many families once again from this current hurricane. Of course, if it had hit any other area, along Florida’s gulf coast, there would have been thousands of other families affected. The lesson of that is simple: Maybe we shouldn’t be over developing the state of Florida, especially along the coast, where we see several hurricanes a year run directly into those areas.
When the storm made its turn to the east, and began to head across Georgia, we had reports of tornadoes forming near our home, and weather alerts going off on everyone’s phones. About four inches of rain fell with the first major band that moved through, so there was a moment that it seemed like we were going to get hammered pretty bad by Idalia. Then the storm followed a more northern trek across the state and the east side of Georgia was blessed with minimum incidents from the storm. As I write this, we still have family in central Georgia without power at their homes, which as the summer heat creeps back in over the next few days will become unbearable. I say all this because I do not want to downplay the power of this hurricane. I have lived through many storms at this point. Every near miss is an extreme blessing and a time to look around and make those adjustments to be ready for the next one, because there will always be a “next time” with these massive tropical systems.
As the storm moved north of the Savannah area, I cleared my garage out and we had a hasty gathering for our third straight worship Wednesday Bible Study. We gained another Dad from the culdesac as we discussed last week’s reading of the end of Genesis, the first ten Chapters of Exodus, and the opening chapters of the Book of Matthew. It was another miraculously mighty night of great discussion over the Bible. I should have joined a Bible Study much earlier in life, so I urge you, dear reader, if you are not involved in a small group with your church, you gotta go all in! Read the “map”, the Holy Bible, for our eternal salvation and do it in fellowship! Do not make any excuses, just make it happen. If you feel like you have tried to attend a small group and it just never worked out, instead of trying harder, you should “Try Higher”. If you want to know what that means, click the image below.
And to close out today’s message, here is a powerful new worship song from Vineyard Worship called “The Gospel”.
Common Sense Reborn 