Joplin tornado: Who ya gonna call?

  • Had some friends who weren’t sure, so I’ll assure any­one out there who’s con­cerned: Our part of Mis­souri didn’t get blown away in Sunday’s tor­na­dos. Joplin is hours away from us, and — as it so hap­pened — Greg and I were in Con­necti­cut, so the wind would’ve had to REALLY be some­thing for us to have been affected. When I returned yes­ter­day, the house was still here, so I assume all’s well.

    Well, I’m being too flip­pant, of course. I’ve been through one tor­nado since I’ve been here, and there’s really noth­ing funny about them at all. If any­thing, I’ve com­plained to Greg numer­ous times about the ubiq­ui­tous home­made videos from pin­heads dri­ving TOWARD a tor­nado and say­ing “Oh wow. Holy crap. Dude!” as if this wasn’t a force of nature that (a) destroys whatever’s in its path and (b) changes its mind fre­quently about what its path is going to be.

    In that way, I find the YouTube video that came out of this lat­est tor­nado in Joplin to be much more accu­rate. I think a lot of peo­ple have already seen it, but if you haven’t, it’s worth watch­ing. Peo­ple holed up in a store wait­ing to see if the tor­nado would hit … and it does, at about the 2:20 mark in this video.

    That’s the REAL deal. I just hope it’s not MY real deal for a while (says Grace, eying the cur­rent thun­der­show­ers and sav­ing often.)

    The per­ti­nent point in this is that at the point when the storm is the most extreme, you hear one woman pray­ing, cry­ing out to Jesus and thank­ing God for His mercy. This is the sim­ple truth that every devout reli­gious per­son knows, but that fic­tional accounts of dis­as­ters never get right. At those moments, you don’t stage some­thing elab­o­rate or pos­ture around pre­tend­ing to be a “per­son of faith,” and you cer­tainly don’t remain ambiva­lent on the sub­ject of whether God is omnipo­tent. You call out to Him, like the psalmist say­ing, “Lord, I cry out unto You — hear my prayer!”

    Thanks be to God that He did hear this woman’s prayers and the many other silent prayers being offered.

    (Photo of storm dam­age, credit: AFP


    Related posts:

    1. The unborn
    2. 10:09 am — “I knew some­thing like this would hap­pen someday.”
    3. The way there
    4. “Lord, have mercy”, cont.
    5. Oprah and her reli­gious beliefs feelings

    May 24th, 2011 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • Word­mama 05.24.2011

    Holy moley, that is ter­ri­fy­ing, even with­out any pic­ture to speak of. It pro­vides a lit­tle comic relief to hear the guy repeat­edly ask­ing who it is he’s lying on top of.

  • Grace

    Oops, I for­got to men­tion that part about the video. Should’ve given the heads-up that it’s mostly black.

  • debd

    Wow, that was upset­ting and ter­ri­fy­ing. Lord have mercy!

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