Flood!
There isn’t anything quite as destructive as a flood, unless it is fire, and to be honest with you, I believe I would prefer the fire.
“Why in the world would you say that?” You might ask. Well, let me explain.
A fire destroys completely, but a flood soaks everything with mud and corruption the like you can’t imagine. Trying to clean up after a flood is an exercise in futility. Furniture and clothing? Forget it. You might just as well burn it all. Back in the 40’s my family and I experienced what was called a “hundred-year flood” which as the name denotes, as measured by severity and damage, only happens once every hundred years. We had muddy river water three feet deep in our home.
A friend rescued our chickens and kept them in his garage until things returned back to somewhat normal. Our boat was swept away leaving us stranded until a neighbor nosed the front of his motorboat in the front door and we all climbed aboard to stay with friends until the river returned to its pre-flood level. Mama put anything she treasured, such as the photo albums, the family bible, and her knick-knacks up as high in the kitchen cabinets as she could, where they survived for the most part.
Daisy, our little Jersey cow? Well, what could we do other than watch as she struck out, bawling her lungs out across the raging, angry flood waters. We watched her go under and turned away. Nothing could survive that torrent. The water finally crested, and that night it started to recede.
Three days later we returned to our soaked homestead. Mama wept when she saw the stinking mess. She only cried for awhile, though, and then she set us all to work.
Life has taught me that one of the best cures for grief is to get your butt into gear and go to work!
We dragged the soggy mattresses out to be discarded. I dare say we carried about a zillion buckets of water from the river to wash the mud from the house. The chickens were returned to their coop where they took up the daily life of being brain-dead chickens again, as though nothing had happened.
Three days after we returned to our home one of the younger kids came running into the house shouting, “Mama, Mama, Daisy’s back, she isn’t drownded, she come home!” And sure enough, Daisy had not “drownded,” she had come home, bawling for want of missing being milked for those days. Such is the way of life.
We all have troubles, but if we are faithful, God will see us through the tumult and turmoil of this life.
Papa God, thank you for promising that you will never leave us nor forsake us, no matter the challenges that we face. When life seems unbearable, you call to us to hang onto you. And when we do, we get through. Thank you for your promises. Amen.
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Richardmvelho
Hey Chuck, Truly great advice! It seems now most people just sit around and bemoan their reality when something bad happens, a flood, a fire, a storm, an earthquake, whatever, they sit around and cry poor, poor, pitiful me and wait for someone to come fix it for them! What they probably should do is stop trying to blame someone else, roll up their sleeves and get to work. This works for natural disasters and strangely for the disconnect that is raging in our country right now! People are rewriting history, assigning blame to everyone and everything except themselves. No solutions are being offered, only explanations of why they think things are as they are! The real reason is most of dysfunction is from when the family unit was actively attacked because someone decided that the job of building good human beings was secondary to working in a factory or selling things! When the concentrated push came to take God out of American lives, things have gone downhill very rapidly. Left to our own devices, ignoring divine guidance, we don't seem to do very well!
Thursday, February 17, 2022 Report this
Charles
Mr. Summerfeld, your astuteness leaves me absolutely flabbergasted! Thank you sir, Mr. Me
Friday, February 18, 2022 Report this