The question about the new City Hall and jazz park complex downtown is whether post-Katrina New Orleans can find the funding. The Times-Picayune raised that issue on the front page of Sunday’s issue, pointing out that 40% or $303 million has been committed by the owner of the Hyatt Hotel. Private money would be needed for 34% or $260 million, leaving $68 million for taxpayers, the cost for demolishing and rebuilding two local and two state office buildings. That money would come from several sources, including FEMA, local bonding issues, and court fees.

The paper published a listing of the various ideas and plans and schemes for turning the downtown of New Orleans into some kind of jazz park or museum or celebration over the years, none of which ever came to fruition. Alongside that was a similar listing of the plans mayors and developers have had to tear down City Hall and do something exciting with that property. The point being, apparently, this new plan may work out but don’t hold your breath. And don’t bet the farm.

In Baton Rouge Monday, a legislative committee finally sent to the floor a plan to let the voters of the state decide on consolidating the seven New Orleans tax assessors into one, since it would require a constitutional amendment. Relatives of the gang of seven who refuse to go quietly, that is to say, several representatives who put their family’s interests before the public’s, attached an amendment to the bill which would bring the matter up for a vote not this fall, but in the fall of 2008. Stay tuned.

With all the talk of rebuilding New Orleans’ levees, Monday’s paper identified a vulnerable area where the rebuilt levee will not be ready to protect citizens at any time during this hurricane system. Travelers on the West Bank Expressway, the elevated highway which splits the suburbs of Westwego, Marrero, Harvey, and Gretna on its way into New Orleans, have to climb a highrise across the Harvey Canal, or drive through a tunnel underneath. The Harvey Canal, lying in Jefferson Parish and not in New Orleans, needs a new floodgate across it and a four-mile levee southeast of the gate, both of which have yet to be built. The Corps of Engineers promises the floodgate will be ready by August, but the land for the levee has not been acquired yet, meaning the levee cannot be ready until a year from this fall. Residents of the Harvey area feel like someone has drawn a bulls-eye across their backs. We can be confident we know how those folks are praying.

Among those who have learned lessons from Katrina, we may now include the Weather Channel. As the nation enters a new hurricane season, the channel has added staffers and additional technology in order to do a better job of broadcasting future storms, we are told. Dr. Steve Lyons, point man for the WC’s hurricane coverage, does not put a lot of faith in predictions by experts on how many major storms we will see this year and how many will hit the U.S. “I don’t like to overalarm the public,” he says. “What I like to do is tell people you should be prepared in any year, whether there are 15 or 20 called ofr or five. You could be one of the unlucky cities that gets hit and you need to prepare if you’re in a hurricane-prone area.”

Sunday afternoon, Riverside Baptist Church in River Ridge, gave away hundreds of hurricane-preparedness kits to the community. Dawn Brown, meteorologist for WWL-TV, promoted it on her portion of this weekend’s newscast and was personally there to assist. Pastor Jim Caldwell is determined that Riverside will make a positive difference in this community.

Suburban Baptist Church in East New Orleans is slowly but surely returning to life. Pastor Jeff Box sends a regular update via e-mail to members and friends. Monday, he wrote:

“We have had a very productive week. Our fellowship hall/educational building is rapidly becoming an all purpose ministry facility. Our shower room is coming along nicely (4 private showers/dressing areas and a washer & dryer). The washer and dryer was graciously donated by the good folks from Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church in Hartsburg, Missouri. This project will be complete in a few days and is something our church could have benefited from years ago. One member commented today that we should have done this ten years ago. I replied that we would have been run out of town.”

Jeff expects their sanctuary to become one of the most beautiful around. He comments on a praise report from Dan Fuller (who has attended our weekly pastors meeting), a fellow believer from Oklahoma, in town working for Bellsouth. He has to be absent from his family for extended periods but has claimed the Suburban folks as his extended family.

Jeff has been preaching from Nehemiah 6. Last Sunday, he writes, “we saw the wall of Jerusalem completed, an impossible task finished in record time. Our people have been amazed at the similarities between Nehemiah’s task and ours. We have talked about how ridiculous many thought rebuilding Jerusalem would be and about how God had called Nehemiah to do something that made absolutely no sense to the human mind. Yet God always works best in our impossibilities. Because of the similarities, it was quite emotional…. We know we serve the same God who carried him through.”

Monday, volunteer workers were clamoring over Pontchartrain Baptist Church, the small facility that had the misfortune of sitting one block from the breach in the 17th Avenue Canal in New Orleans. Their buildings were flooded and the onrushing waters did lasting damage.

“These people are from Grace Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi,” Pastor Jerry Smith said. This is the church that took his family in during their evacuation, and now they’re helping to rebuild the church. “The educational building will be torn down,” he said, “and we’re building Sunday School classrooms inside the sanctuary.” The worship space will be a third of what it was formerly, but more functional. Jerry sells cash registers to supermarkets during the week, and spends a lot of time on the highway, so it was the Lord’s doing that I caught him at the church today.

I asked Pastor Jerry about the huge and sparkling American flag painted on top of the sanctuary. “Was that there before Katrina?” I could not remember. He smiled, “I had a call from a man with an organization called Wounded Warriors. They go around the country painting one American flag on some building in each of the fifty states. This fellow said he was looking for a site to put one in New Orleans. When he saw our church, he knew he’d found the place.” Jerry asked what this was going to cost. “Not a dime,” the man said, and that’s how Pontchartrain Church ended up with a most striking visual to the thousands of visitors to the damaged neighborhood and the rebuilt levee.

“You’re going to have the church rebuilt before the community comes back,” I told the pastor. He agreed, and said, “That’s the plan.” To be there for the people returning to their homes, provide help for them, provide a community of faith and a place of worship.

Sunday night at the Haitian Church, I preached on the doors God opens and those He shuts. In Revelation 3, Jesus said, “I am the one who opens a door and no one can close it, who shuts and no one can open.”

We who follow the Lord Jesus Christ in this area of the world face a wide open door for ministry and evangelism these days. Whether it will close or when we cannot know. What we do know is when God opens one, He expects His people to walk through it.

What is yet to be determined is the extent of our obedience.

We ask for prayer–heart-felt, deep, earnest prayer–for the family of Bonnie (Mrs. Buford) Easley, whose grandchild Haley Mazzella drowned Saturday, and whom we wrote about here Sunday. I visited with the family Monday. Their grief is almost inconsolable, their pain beyond description. Parents Tommy and Sonya particularly need the kind of comfort and healing the Lord alone can provide. The rest of us stand outside this grief and wonder at its magnitude.

I recall reading somewhere that when Mark Twain received the news of the death of his daughter, he later wrote, “That one can receive such devastating news and survive is a testament to the human construction.” (This is a rough approximation of what he said. I’d welcome the exact quote if someone finds it.)

A thousand years from now, we shall look back on these few days on earth and understand all that makes no sense now. We will rejoice in those who were faithful while carrying great pain and hardly seeing the next step before them. We will be glad that we did not quit when we grew tired and did not desert when we had mostly questions and few answers. In the meantime, getting through these wearisome days is the task before us.

Let us love one another and pray for each other.

“Beloved, it has not appeared as yet what we will be. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” I John 3:2