What a day to be thinking of the events of 9-11 four years ago. So many similarities.

This morning, I preached in Meek Baptist Church in Arley, Alabama. This is on the banks of Smith Lake, a resort area. The church is prospering and has relocated with all new buildings in the last few months. In fact, the dedication is next Sunday. They had over 200 in attendance. I talked with them about I Corinthians 16:9 where Paul says, “A wide door for effective service is open for us and there are many obstacles.”

Opportunities and obstacles are frequently found hand in hand. God opens the door for a great opportunity and the enemy arrives with obstructions. John Wesley once wrote a brother, “I hear great things about what God is doing in your area. I wonder that the enemy has not raised up a champion against it.” He understood that as a rule, where you find one you find the other.

I told the congregation that naive people, those with a shallow understanding of scripture, perhaps think if God opens the door for a great advance, there could not possibly be any opposition. And likewise, if there is opposition, it’s a sign God is not in it. Both are wrong.

A little scripture study takes care of that, doesn’t it. The history of the movement of God’s kingdom through the ages is a story of great opportunities on the one hand while facing incredible opposition from the enemy on the other hand. And often the obstacles grow out of the opportunity, and the opportunity grows out of the obstacle.

September 11, 2001, saw this nation plunged into shock as severely as it has ever occurred. Yet, out of that great tragedy came waves of opportunities to present the gospel to this nation, person by person. And so must it be with Katrina, as God’s people take in evacuees and minister to them one by one.

When son Neil and his family left New Orleans on Saturday just in front of the hurricane, they could not find their cat Lizzie, and so left her behind. Lizzie is an outdoor cat anyway, and more of a community feline, probably, than any one person’s. The kids worried about her, though, so last Monday when Neil and Julie returned home for a few hours to check on things and pick up clothes and supplies, they were charged by their young’uns to bring back Lizzie. They did. Five hours later, as they pulled into the driveway at the McCalls near Columbus, MS, Lizzie bolted from the pickup and started exploring. Within two minutes, she came face to face with the McCall cat, a fearsome animal that let Lizzie know in a heartbeat who was in charge. After a moment of hissing, Lizzie was up the nearest tree, and there she sat. “She’ll come down when she gets hungry,” Randy McCall said. Wrong. Three days later, they put a ladder to the tree and climbed to the top and brought her down. They installed her in a kennel and put it in a room inside the house and there she is to this moment. Saturday, the twins said, “Grandpa, come see Lizzie.” They had to drag her out of the kennel, then held and caressed her.

Poor cat. She has been traumatized first by the storm which must have seemed endless to her, then by the absence of food or water, then the long road trip, then by the bully cat that ran her up the tree, then days without food or water.

Thousands of people from our city feel exactly like Lizzie. They have lost family members, house, church, jobs, everything that defined their lives. They’re living in a national guard armory or campground and feel as though they’ve been chased up a tree without a clue on how to get down or what to do when they get down. They want to curl up in a “kennel” and be left alone.

To me, the silliest question of the year is SHOULD NEW ORLEANS BE REBUILT? Anyone with the slightest knowledge of our city knows that the entire metro area is not under water. When they say “80% of New Orleans is under water,” what they mean is that portion of the city which is officially known on the map as New Orleans. But that’s less than half of the real city.

Draw a circle, then draw a line down the center. That’s New Orleans, and the line is the border of Orleans and Jefferson Parishes. Each parish has about an equal population, some 400 to 500 thousand. Yet, you cannot tell when you’re leaving one for the other. Jefferson Parish encompasses Metairie, population over 300,000 which makes it the second largest unincorporated city in America, and the outer slice of the parish is Kenner, another 70 or 80,000. Along the bottom of Jefferson Parish, you could add in small cities like River Ridge, Harahan, Marrero, Westwego, and so on. None of these are New Orleans proper. And–very importantly–they’re all still there. None of them was washed away.

So, forget about rebuilding New Orleans. It’s still there.

This morning, in Meek Baptist Church, during the announcement time, a lady stood and thanked everyone who has helped to take care of their evacuated family which is now living in her home. She asked those who had contributed food or clothing or other supplies to stand. Some twenty to thirty people rose. Then George Wurz stepped to the pulpit to thank everyone. He and his wife had left New Orleans suddenly, he said, bringing his mother who is on oxygen. “We drove to Meridian,” he said, “and had her tanks refilled. Then we came on to Birmingham, and found out about a little town called Jasper. Then we ended up out here at Arley. And we just want to thank you for opening your hearts and your home.” He pulled out a note and said, “This is my hurricane evacuation list, the things I had to do before leaving town. (Most people in New Orleans have one of those.) First was to gas the car. Then get prescriptions refilled. And so on. I did everything except number 11. I didn’t get a chance to return the Blockbuster videos.”

The woman who was hosting George and his wife Peggy then said, “We’ve talked to the Red Cross about turning our old church into a shelter for several families. They’re coming out tomorrow to look at the facility and tell us how many we may put there.”

It’s true that New Orleans is never going to be the same. But the simple fact is neither will the rest of our part of America. Citizens from our city have emigrated into small towns all over the southeast and beyond, and many, having caught a taste of smog-free, clean air, and great, friendly neighbors, and crime-free neighborhoods, will never be returning. Except to buy the occasional po-boy or to get their fix of crawfish etoufee.

We will miss them. But as an Alabama farm boy assigned by the Father to New Orleans–and perfectly willing to return–I totally understand, and except for missing Barnes and Noble, sort of envy them.