Navigating Change: Faith, Preparation, and Compassion

Everybody expected that it would move over the coast of Central America as most hurricanes do. I confess to being a weather channel nerd. So if this were the weather channel, they'd be making a motion like this right about now. But they expected this hurricane to kind of move west. And the eye of the hurricane would go over the land. And when that would happen, the hurricane begins to just disintegrate and fall apart. So you end up with a number of hours of extremely intense rain, and then a day of extremely intense wind, and a day or two of extremely intense rain. And then you end up with a tropical storm and a tropical depression. And soon the blue skies are back. [00:00:43]

But what happened with Hurricane Mitch was, as it formed, it started moving west. And when it got about 40 miles from the coast of Honduras, it stopped. And then for the next day, it just began to wobble. A day, two days, three days, four days, for a week. For five days, it wobbled. And then it moved over the shore. Well, what that meant is that for those five days, it was picking up all that warm, moist Caribbean air and dropping it on Central America. You may have heard a terrible tragedy occurred in Nicaragua, where a volcano, you know, that had formed over thousands and thousands of years from the ash of this volcano, creating a huge cinder cone. Well, that cinder cone of ash absorbed this rain water day after day. And finally, one day during this rain event, the whole hurricane slumped all at once. [00:01:24]

And a town at the base of the hurricane was just covered by the, I'm sorry, a town at the base of the volcano was covered by the ash. And over 30,000 people died in a matter of minutes. They were just wiped out instantly. It was a horrific effect of the storm. In Honduras, in downtown Tegucigalpa, someone who was there told me that the floodwaters reached the eighth story of buildings. Can you imagine this? Because in that week, 100 inches of rain fell in Honduras. Now try to imagine, over eight feet of rain fell in Honduras. And when that rain fell, it to swell the rivers, as you could imagine, this is the Choluteca River. [00:02:21]

And what you see here is a structure that used to be a bridge. We can't even call it a bridge anymore, because by definition, a bridge helps you get from one side of something to another. This doesn't help you do anything anymore, because the floodwaters washed the road away on both sides of the bridge. And then when the floodwaters receded, the riverbed was in a new place. And so now this bridge is completely worthless, except that it has now become a tourist attraction. Because people from the two villages that were connected by this road and bridge go to the end of the road and sort of wave at the people they haven't been able to visit in all of these years. [00:03:02]

But I think this picture is a powerful metaphor for what happens in our world, because 100 inches of rain falls in Honduras every year, every two years. What's unusual, though, is when 100 inches of rain is condensed, you see, into a week. And I think change is the same way. Change is happening constantly. But when a lot of change is concentrated in a short amount of time, structures that used to serve become tourist attractions. And the maps that used to accurately reflect reality don't reflect reality anymore. And then you have to start adventuring off the map. [00:03:39]

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. And that phrase, always be prepared, always be prepared, I think, is very significant. It's not that you can get prepared once and you're prepared forever. It would be like your software, you know. You keep getting upgrades. And he's saying you have to continually be upgraded in your preparation because people are going to continue to ask you new questions. [00:04:42]

A lot of our churches are very well prepared for the questions of the 1840s. Some are prepared for the 1950s. What we call contemporary churches are prepared for the 1970s. But there are relatively few churches and few Christians that are still being prepared to deal with the questions of the new century and the new millennium. And one of the real essentials, the Apostle Peter says, is that as we engage with people, we do so with gentleness and respect. And that's going to be our tone toward our culture. [00:05:12]

And when I do, it always frustrates me because the attitude toward our neighbors and the attitude toward our culture that I hear there is not gentleness and respect. Generally, it's an attitude of disgust and disdain. And so this weekend we're going to get practice in trying to look at our neighbors and our culture, including the people who don't understand or agree with a lot of what we believe. And instead of talking about how wrong they are, we're going to try to understand them and treat them with gentleness and respect and take their questions seriously. [00:05:50]

In fact, this would be interesting to think about, talk about later on. But when you invent writing, you make possible new levels of economy, economics, new levels of government, all kinds of new levels of learning and passing on your learning from generation to generation. The invention of writing is an incredible technological advancement. It's like 100 inches of rain falling in a week. It changes the world. And it gives birth to a new world that we call the ancient world. [00:07:03]

Abraham comes out of the Sumerian Empire. Moses, you'll remember, he brings the people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt where they'd been slaves for 400 years. So the story starts in the Sumerian Empire. It ends up for a while in the Egyptian Empire. You might remember when they resettle under Joshua and Caleb and the others in the land of promise. Eventually, the northern kingdom is conquered by the Assyrians. And then the Babylonians. It's actually, it was in modern-day Iraq, and you've got a regime change in Iraq is nothing new. And after the Babylonians, you had another regime change to the Medo-Persians. They're the ones who allowed Nehemiah and Ezra and others to go back and resettle. Were the people resettled living under a series of empires until the Roman Empire begins? And that's when Jesus comes, and the apostles, and they spread the good news of Jesus across the Roman Empire. [00:08:12]

Some people think that the Roman Empire ended because when more people became Christians, nobody could sustain the brutality necessary to keep imperial power. And so the idea is that wherever Christianity goes, people become less violent, and it makes that, you know, I wish that were still true. It doesn't seem to be true anymore, sadly. But around 500 A.D., also you have these succession of invading barbarian hordes, the Goths and the Huns, and later the Vikings and the Mongols. But around 500 A.D., enough of these invaders come, and the Roman Empire is getting brittle and fragile. [00:09:18]