Have you ever been in a situation where “body language” said it all? Where no words were uttered yet you got full understanding. A place where love for God and love for others didn’t have to be explained, you just saw it. For a moment in time, The Holy Spirit was so evident……..it left your speechless!
As a writer that does not happen to me very often, the speechless part, but Sunday July 28, 2013 did just that. I journeyed over 3 hours to a small town that had so inspired my book, A Season of Rebuilding. I had never been to this town before, and knew no one.
They were having a dedication to a new church building, as well as a celebration service of all the GREAT things God had done. I slipped in the new pew unnoticed. I was an observer. I needed not to tell folks who I was. Nor did anyone know I had written a book in attempt to express my grief and sorrow over the devastation that happened to so many on April 27th, 2011.
As I drove around the small town and through the community….the evidence of the EF5 tornado, were still very visible to me. I shuddered as I saw foundation after foundation, with empty driveways going nowhere. My heart cried as I saw steps that used to lead up to homes and lives of Smithville residents, blown away two years ago. The markings of a town with thriving businesses, now have tall weeds growing where their buildings once stood.
How can I write about these things? When I began to write a few months after the tornados had hit, it was with fear and trepidation. I wanted to honor the people who had lost so much. I wanted to help in some way. Writing was my way of sharing in their grief. I purposed to write a fiction work, so as to not be offensive, but I longed to listen and weep with real lives and real stories.
Interestingly I never got that opportunity. So when I found out about this celebration day, I went to celebrate with them, as a silent visitor. I sat there in the midst of celebrating people. Their warm welcome and love spoke words of great faith. Their faces told me of the most important part of the story. They told me in their countenance that God gets the glory in all things. This church’s strength was in God’s faithfulness. In no way could I imagine their grief that day or the days that followed, but it welded an unshakable faith that cannot be explained.
The closeness that the whole community had baffled my mind. I have never seen so much together in such a torn apart place! Only God can make that kind of together, and that kind of faith. I can see why they were celebrating!
A tornado can destroy lives, buildings and things……
….but it can never crush hearts that belong to God!
Thank you Smithville Baptist Church for showing me that truth!
I will sing of the LORD's great love forever; with my mouth I will make your
faithfulness known through all generations.
Psalm 89:1
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