I wonder if the frustration my family and I are experiencing is being repeated throughout evacuation-land?

All week long, we have been occupying suite 104 of the Quality Inn in Ozark, Alabama, where we traveled to last Saturday in order to preach a revival meeting at Ridgecrest Baptist Church this week. Pastor Jim Hill said what we were thinking, that God knew about Katrina even when we all made these plans and we should go forward. Now that the event is almost over, I’m more certain than ever that he’s right.

Frustration, we’re told, is defined as having one’s goals blocked. If my goal has been to be in the thick of things back at home in New Orleans–or at least in the parts of the metro area we can get into, and it certainly is–then, I’ve been frustrated. I know not to second-guess decisions once they are made, but knowing it with your head and not doing it with your heart are separate things. The folks here have treated us royally, not like refugees but as brother and sister come to do the work of the Father among them, yet at every spare moment, I’ve been on the computer or cell phone with our pastors and other workers, trying to do anything I can to encourage or inform.

Today, my computer went out.

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I’m urging anyone who asks not to rush back home into the New Orleans area. While the various city and parish leaders seem to be inviting residents to return, the FEMA director says not so fast. He cautions there is not enough clean water, not enough stores open, and that things are still not up and running sufficiently to take care of hundreds of thousands of citizens coming home.

If you are where you can stay another week, please try to do so.

My brother Ron sent me a weird article from someone who called himself an eyewitness of all the ugliness of the evacuees. This fellow had decided to volunteer in Houston, and after receiving a brief tour of the Astrodome, he stood outside handing out bottles of water to evacuees coming off the endless buses that were arriving from New Orleans. He was offended that few said thank you, and that many preferred a coke or a beer. Then as he did other labors, he was horrified to see the New Orleanians being harsh and demanding and selfish. The conclusions he came to–using ugly profanity and racial epithets–seemed to justify his own mean spirit and his bigotry.

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When the New Orleans ministers met in Jackson, Mississippi, last Wednesday, Ken Taylor (professor at the seminary and pastor of Elysian Fields Baptist Church) said, “I’ve been preaching through John’s Gospel. And my next sermon–the one that was canceled when we all fled the storm–was to be from John 11. The resurrection.”

You cannot be a serious follower of Jesus Christ and not believe in resurrection.

Resurrections come in all shapes and sizes. Someone has asked that I tell you about the time God gave one to our family.

When I was thirteen, our house burned. That in itself was awful, but it came at the worst time in our lives. Two years earlier, the coal mines in West Virginia had shut down, Dad was laid off, and we moved into my widowed grandmother’s house in rural Alabama. Unable to find work there, Dad farmed. Once in a while, he got a few days’ work in a push mine, a home-made tunnel that was as primitive as anything from the 1800s, dangerous and dark and poor paying. Trying to feed and clothe a family of six children, one takes what he can get.

The feeding came easily; we lived on a farm. The clothing was the hard part. The shoes I was wearing had long since worn out, but there was no choice but to wear them on. We had moved across the hill to an uncle’s vacant house, four rooms it was, so you can imagine how crowded we were. I had no coat, and in the winter when I stood waiting for the bus in short sleeves, I would say, ‘I’m hot natured. Can’t stand coats.’ Kids can be such liars. My brother Ron was graduating from high school that year and they had scraped the money together to find him a graduating suit. Then, on that February, 1954, day some coals must have rolled out of the open grate and onto the wood floor. Dad had gone to Jasper and Mom was across the hill at Granny’s house. We were all in school.

It was like a death. You thought you were as low as it was possible to get, then someone found a way to go lower. As we stood around the smoldering remains, Ron said, “Mom, did you save my suit?” She said, “Son, we didn’t save anything.” So we all cried.

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I’ve promised my wonderful son Marty that I’ll slow down the rate of these articles in a day or so. This log is like a daily radio program I once had: you think of something fascinating to say and you have a great outlet. Once the outlet dries up, you no longer get the ideas. I’m confident there is a law of nature involved here.

The folks who work in our associational office are about to get paid. Stand outside on a clear morning and you can hear the hallelujahs. Since we use paper checks (remember them?) and they were in our office on Lakeshore Drive in New Orleans, our wonderful computer guy Louis James has been working with Whitney Bank to set us up with automated payroll deposits, and it’s finally about to happen. My credit card company will be so happy to see me coming. (My line over the past few weeks was: “I don’t have a lot of money, but I have great credit.” That worked until I found out the card was maxed out. First time for everything, they say, and this was mine.)

Wednesday, at the First Baptist Church of Jackson, around 20 of us preachers from New Orleans assembled. Paul drove over from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Ken and Charlie and Chris from Northwest Alabama, Keith and his son Keith from Ocean Springs, MS, several from throughout Mississippi, and a number from Louisiana. We learned that Alberto and Cosme had stayed in a shelter with their families for a few days, but are comfortably situated in Brookhaven at the moment. All of them needed the fellowship, needed to hear assurances that God’s people–all of them, Baptist members, our denominational leaders, everyone–is going to help them once we are able to return. Scott Smith is back at Highland Baptist Church in Metairie. “We had services there last Sunday,” he said. Oh? How many were in attendance? “Two.”

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Yesterday, a number of us met in Hammond, Louisiana, at the North Shore Associational office to begin laying plans for “Adopt-A-Church,” the plan to match New Orleans churches up with sponsoring congregations all over the country.

I think the storm was still raging when Roger Freeman, pastor of Clarksville, Tennessee’s First Baptist Church, sent me an email suggesting that we partner churches in his state with New Orleans churches. I thought it was a great idea, and made special sense coming from Roger, who pastored New Orleans’ First Baptist Church in the late 80s into the mid-90s. He knows and loves our city and these churches. The editor of the state paper was working with Roger on this partnership.

A couple of days later, I began to hear that other states were thinking of the same type linkup. Then, last Tuesday in Baton Rouge, I learned that the North American Mission Board in Atlanta was proposing the same thing nationwide. That’s where we are now.

Several times a day I’m getting emails from people informing me their church is ready and willing to come to New Orleans to help a church rebuild. They know we’re not ready for company yet. In fact, we’re not even home yet. Although daily we hear reports of some residents being invited to re-enter very soon. As soon as it happens, we’ll be open for business and ready to welcome teams from the churches…so long as they understand a few things.

Understand that New Orleans is going to be different. No tours this time to exotic locales. No dining out in your favorite restaurants. It’s all work this time.

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I may be wearing my welcome out with my friends. Tonight, I’m staying with Charles and Shirley Martin in Brookhaven, Mississippi, former members of our church in Kenner before they retired and moved to the country. They belong to Easthaven Baptist Church here, a congregation that has basically turned over their facilities to evacuees from the coast.

“We’re not able to have Sunday School right now,” Charles said, “because they’re everywhere. We’re having a great time, though. Yesterday, our choir was packed and the guests really seemed to enjoy the worship service.”

“There’s an old trailer park outside of town,” Charles said, “that we’ve taken over. Another church and we are buying a dozen or more trailers and we’re setting up there for some of the families.”

“We have three requirements,” he said. “It must be a real family, not just some people living together. They must agree to go to church, and third, they have to get a job. We’re helping them find jobs.”

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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.

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They’re now saying they may have overestimated the number of dead in New Orleans. I certainly hope so. It beats me how they ever came up with figures of 20,000 or even 40,000 in the first place. You get these local politicians in front of microphones, they’re exhausted beyond words, trying hard to say something that might be helpful, and these numbers come out. To their discredit, the media took it at face value. I pray that on reentering New Orleans, we’ll have surprisingly few funerals to conduct.

I noticed something this week about television. The people most affected by the hurricane, people who have relocated into homes and hotels, are watching very little of the continuous coverage. I’ve not asked any of them, but can tell you personally, it hurts too badly. Neil and Julie and I ate burgers yesterday in BackyardBurgers here in Columbus, MS, and the lone television mounted on the wall had closed captioning. We sat there glued to reading the words from anchors and leaders, and felt the burdens descend on our shoulders again. We will meet this soon enough, just as quickly as we are told it’s safe to come home.

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Rick Warren said, “There are three stages to helping people in tragedies like this. The first is RESCUE. The federal government is in charge, and it usually takes a few days. The second stage is RESUMING. This is the restoration of utilities, water, services. The local government is in charge and it takes a few weeks. The third stage is REBUILDING. This is the duty of everyone including the churches and it takes years.”

Rebuilding is harder than building, Warren said. When you build, you have the fun of seeing something rise where there was nothing. But in rebuilding, you first have to tear out, muck out, and clean out. It’s messy. It’s the same for restoring human lives. It’s harder to rebuild a life after a great loss.

Rick Warren was speaking to a roomful of Louisiana Baptist leaders who had gathered last Tuesday in the fellowship hall of Florida Boulevard Baptist Church in Baton Rouge. He and his wife Kay and several members of the staff at Saddleback Church in Southern California had just visited the Astrodome and spoken to the thousands who found shelter there, then in Memphis to a large group, and in Jackson, Mississippi. They had come to Baton Rouge to sit down with local leadership to hear our plans for rebuilding the Lord’s work in New Orleans, and then to decide how their church and the vast numbers who make up the Purpose-Driven network will respond.

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Have you ever suffered from sensory overload? You are talking to so many people, both cell phones are ringing, someone else needs your attention–and pretty soon you do not remember what you said to anyone. “Did you get my call?” someone asked. “I suppose,” you answer. Anyway, this is where I am today.

After a day of meetings in Baton Rouge on Tuesday to discuss what to do once we’re all able to re-enter metro New Orleans, I spent the night with a cousin, then left town early Wednesday morning, bound for my community in Jefferson Parish. The authorities were allowing residents four days this week to get in to check out their homes and pick up any necessities. Son Neil and his wife Julie did it Monday; Wednesday was my day.

The 70 mile drive from Baton Rouge took four hours. My wife had sent along a list of things to bring and a flashlight so I could see inside the closets. Only a wife would have thought of the light; it had never entered my mind. Our neighborhood looked rough. All the trees were not down, but all were damaged. The streets had been cleared of downed trees, so somebody has been working. Shingles from the rooftop littered my yard. If it rains before we can return, I’m in a lot of trouble. And no, I decided not to empty the scary refrigerator or freezer. What’s the point; they’re ruined anyway. By the time we return, the electricity will be on and the spoiled things will be refrozen, making it safe to remove them before discarding the appliances.

I spent an hour driving around our part of town. Here’s a quick synopsis.

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