Start Rebuilding

I am waiting for my wrists to heal. I can't work too long on the computer because it makes them hurt. Waiting to heal from any infirmity is not easy. Life goes on hold. What used to  be simple tasks, like unloading the dishwasher become unscalable walls. So I wear my double wrist braces and sometimes just sit, gazing into space. Most of what I do requires wrist movement, I have discovered.

I have a friend who is battling cancer. It has been a long process, and things are looking good right now, but it has not been easy. Today I noticed in her update about her radiation treatments, she closed asking if we would all pray for a friend of hers who has just been diagnosed with cancer. Here she is battling a horrific enemy, and she has the compassion and empathy to divert focus from herself to others who need help. That is a woman of God.

I am reading the book of Nehemiah right now. I love Nehemiah. He is someone who just ignores the enemy, keeps his focus on God, and keeps struggling through impossible odds. Nehemiah is not one of the well known heroes of the Bible, but he is one of my favorites. He was cupbearer to the King of Persia, during the exile of the Jews to Babylonia in the 5th century BC. He was in a position of influence and favoritism. But he was a Jew, and when he learned of the condition of his historic homeland, he asked the King's permission to return to Jerusalem, and rebuild the city and the crumbling walls surrounding it. The King grants permission. Nehemiah could have taxed the people to help with the repairs, or had special food and comfort for himself as an emissary of the King, but instead, he throws his lot in with his people and has no special favors for himself. He looks around at a ruined city, a devastated, ransacked, crumbling city and says, "Let us start building."

And then, the enemy comes while Nehemiah and his small ragtag remnant of Jews are rebuilding the walls. The enemy taunts them from just outside the wall; tries to undermine the people's faith in Nehemiah and his God. The enemy includes the armies of Samaria, and they threaten attack, urging the Jews to stop rebuilding, join the enemy, and leave this crazy leader asking help from a deity everyone knows will never rise out of their imagination to be of any true service. The people are weary, and poor, and the work seems impossible from the get go. The enemy is wearing them down. But Nehemiah then utters the rallying cry that I find myself calling out in my soul over and over when life bears down a little too violently:
The God of heaven will give us success.


The people rally, the wall is rebuilt, in an impossible 52 days. The Jews begin to trickle back to Jerusalem. The lagging faith of a beleaguered people is fanned into flame, and hope begins to rekindle in the hearts of the exiled Jews when they learn Jerusalem is rebuilt!

Meanwhile, I look at my braced wrists, and realize one thing I can do without my wrists. I can pray.

Nehemiah 2:20
I answered them by saying, "The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding,

Piles

But it was free!
I gazed morosely out the front door window.
The pile of wood chips sat for day #2 in our front yard. Right next to the property line of the new neighbor. A huge pile. Like a mountain. A mountain of work that I was told I should not touch. There were big plans for this pile, beyond the capabilities of a mere woman. A man in a truck had driven by and offered to dump this pile on our lawn for free! And now it sat, mocking me.


After a day of biting my tongue, I asked the One who had allowed the free pile to enter our domain, "Where shall I spread the pile?"
"I will get to it today," said the One, "Please don't touch the pile."
The moon shone bright on the free pile that night.
The next day, every time I passed the front door, the free pile was grinning at me. The pile and I both knew that piles, no matter how large, tend to fade from consciousness the more days they sit there.

We all have them. Sometimes they are physical piles- laundry, dishes, papers to grade, books to read, unfinished projects of Sargent Pepper Lonely Heart Club band jackets made of duct tape that cost Mothers a pretty penny piled hopefully in the closet, homework, dust, clothes that don't fit anymore. Sometimes they are mental piles- the daily practice that has not occurred in over a week, the bookstores to call to talk into stocking a book, the political candidate credentials to read in order to make an informed vote, the volunteer opportunities lined neatly up in the back of our heads, the kindness, potential good deeds, and patience stored away that one day will be retrieved...Sometimes they are spiritual piles- the bible verses to commit to memory some day soon, the daily reading of God's word and encouragement, the daily alone time for meditation and prayer.


Risking wrath at 4:00, I went to the One who had promised the free pile would be spread after lunch.
"About that pile...the one I am not allowed to touch...I can abide by that for one more day. But after that, I don't think I will have the will power to resist anymore."
The One had the good grace to chuckle, and I noticed a few minutes later, was working on the free pile.


Brother John sent photos of his street, with the flooded homes now emerged from the water. On the front lawns were piles and piles of a lifetime of possessions. Ruined possessions.
One neighbor wrote, "I hope they take that pile away soon. I can't bear to see twenty years of my life ruined on my lawn."


I called a bookstore in the flood zone of Binghamton, the town beside my brothers. There would be no bookstores open yet in my brother's flooded town...if there were ever any bookstores to open again in my brother's flooded town.
"I am an author who lived most of my life there," I told the bookstore owner, "I was wondering if I could stock my books with you and donate a portion of the sales to the flood relief. If there are any sales...."
With my husband still unemployed, I can't do a whole lot more. Nonetheless, the book store owner was grateful and would add my book to her pile of inventory. A good pile, I hope. A pile with promise that would disappear perhaps more rapidly than our free pile steaming now like a pile of compost.


So, with the pile staring at me all day, I had piles on my mind. I have learned that God works through visual images, through symbols, not only in Biblical times, but in my life today. A word study of "piles" in the Bible is very interesting. There are basically two kinds of piles- piles of rubble and destruction from an angry fed up God, and piles of remembrance of the miraculous salvation of God. Sin, redemption. Destruction, Salvation. Rubble, Remembrance. I lay in bed this morning thinking of what kind of character I was piling up, day after day. Which kind of pile will I be...one that people would desire to have carted away as quickly as possible, or one that would be remembered with fondness, with love? I better get working on the pile I want to be, I thought, glancing out at the free pile of wood chips in the front yard.

Leviticus 26:30-31
³⁰ I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you. ³¹ I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of your offerings. 

Genesis 31:44-46, 48
⁴⁴ Come now, let’s make a covenant, you and I, and let it serve as a witness between us.”  ⁴⁵ So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. ⁴⁶ He said to his relatives, “Gather some stones.” So they took stones and piled them in a heap, and they ate there by the heap.^..
 48 Laban said, “This heap is a witness between you and me today.” ... “May the LORD keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other. 

2 Chronicles 31:5-6

⁵ As soon as the order went out, the Israelites generously gave the firstfruits of their grain, new wine, olive oil and honey and all that the fields produced. They brought a great amount, a tithe of everything. ⁶ The people of Israel and Judah who lived in the towns of Judah also brought a tithe of their herds and flocks and a tithe of the holy things dedicated to the LORD their God, and they piled them in heaps.

A Patch of Dry Ground

My brother spent the night in his flooded town in his flooded home with a shotgun, watching for looters that dared enter his home. There is no water, electricity, food service, or any service of any kind open in the devastated Owego/Binghamton NY flood zone. Into this vacuum, the looters came. The National Guard increased its patrol, but my brother must not have felt it was sufficient. He couldn't stop the flood, but he is determined to stop the looters.

I can't imagine what his night must have been like, but I am waiting anxiously to hear from him today. It distresses me greatly that anyone would take advantage of others' troubles as to loot the remnants of horrendous loss. Ninety percent of the Owego businesses were flooded extensively. I can't imagine how this town is going to rebuild.

My brother sent a newspaper photograph of an aerial view of flooded Owego. No streets are visible. It looks like Holland with canals of water crisscrossing the town, with trees growing out of the water. There is one patch, one small patch of dry grass in the whole city. The flood waters rose around all but that patch of grass. Half my brother's house sits on that small patch of dry ground. His house is the most fortunate house in all of Owego.

While the waters were rising, the river not yet crested, and John's wife, Jenny, and son Anthony, were trapped in the house, John had texted me.
"Now might be a good time to get on the God hotline," he said.
"I'm on it," I texted back.
I prayed and prayed, throughout the day, texting back and forth with my brother as the river rose. I prayed for the safety of John's family, and for his beautiful two hundred year old home.
Finally I got the text that the river had crested. And that Jenny and Anthony had been rescued.
However, I felt like John might think God had let him down. The house had still flooded, at least part way up the first floor level. But his family was safe. I praised God for His deliverance. Not a single person died in the overwhelming flood.

But as I gazed at the startling photograph of Owego underwater, with that single patch of grass beside my brother's house, I thought of the rest of the story I had learned later. Jenny had been able to walk across that single patch of dry ground between the waters, to the public phone in the business on the other side of the grass, and call the authorities. Every road was flooded. Owego was trapped in the water. The National Guard was alerted, and John's family was rescued by boat. I couldn't stop looking at that patch of grass, and thinking if that isn't an answer to prayer, I don't know what is.

"But what about the other people?" asked Asherel, when I told her the story.
Yes, I had thought of the other people. They weren't given a patch of grass. But everyone in Owego is safe, and there is much to be thankful for in that alone.
"I should have prayed more fervently for the whole city," I said, "I was so focused on praying for John's family..."
It is not that I think my prayers direct God, nor that they even influence God. But we are told to pray "without ceasing", and I do believe that obedience in prayer brings blessing. It may not bring the answers we long for, but there is always blessing in prayer. And if everyone would bow their head in prayer, they would have no time to loot, or blow up buildings...

This anniversary of 9/11, I have my first book signing. It was the Park Road Bookstore's available date, and thus assigned to me. But my book is one of hope, of redemption, of saving what seemed impossibly lost. Perhaps it is a good day for my book signing, after all.

When there is a flood of trouble around you, and today certainly is the memory of that, I think sometimes the only way to wade through the grief is to look for that one patch of dry ground. The waters do eventually recede, and flood plains have the richest soil of all to start anew, when we find the strength and courage to replant.

Nehemiah 9:10-12

¹¹ You divided the sea before them, so that they passed through it on dry ground, but you hurled their pursuers into the depths, like a stone into mighty waters. ¹² By day you led them with a pillar of cloud, and by night with a pillar of fire to give them light on the way they were to take.