🙌 It's the Friday Call to Worship! 🙌

Hurricane Ike devastated the Gulf Coast of Texas in September 2008. Three years prior, I lost the home I grew up in as a result of Hurricane Rita in the same area. The destruction of Hurricane Ike was record-breaking. I was immediately hired as a crisis counselor with firsthand experience in this unexpected kind of loss. I worked with first responders, school children and staff, churches, addicts, business owners, emergency services, homeless men and women, and everyone in between. A community of people had seen things they wouldn't forget, lost people, pets and memories forever, and had to start life over from nothing. The air was impure and water unsafe. Swollen livestock, sea animals, cars and parts of homes washed ashore for months. Vermin and roaches ran wild. It took a long time to restore livable conditions.

Each morning, as I drove over the bridge to enter the island where I did most of my work, I sang Chris Tomlin's "God of This City". I sang God's truth until it became mine. I stored His hope in my soul before I began 8 hours of catching tears, holding hopelessness, and seeking support systems. Every day, I fell a little more in love with that place and those people. I could see Hope in Jesus as a banner over a coast that had literally been leveled. The more I sang, the more I saw the people and that place with God's eyes for them.

I learned through that experience that, when life has been leveled by storm, sickness, loss, trauma, violence, injustice or anything else, the very rawest part of us seek the Hope we have in Jesus. When life gets leveled and disaster strikes, our core design is to find our Savior. And He's easy to find!

I learned that we can remind ourselves that He's the God of this city, this body, this marriage, this nation, this child, this dream... He is God. Sing over your city and whatever He has called to mind today! He is faithful!