The front page of Sunday’s Times-Picayune begins a three day series on “The Fight to Save a Disappearing Coast,” referring to the wetlands between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. “LAST CHANCE,” booms the headline across the top of the page.

Kerry St. Pe is the director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, an effort to save one of the Gulf Coast’s most fragile and critical zones. A map on his office wall shows the satellite image of the great expanse of marshes which protect New Orleans from the ocean which we call the Gulf of Mexico. On the picture is a warning, announcing that these marshes will vanish by the year 2040. When that happens, the sea will be at New Orleans’ doorstep.

That map was produced 3 years ago. And it’s dead wrong.

St. Pe says, “People think we still have 20, 30, 40 years left to get this done. They’re not even close.”

“Ten years is how much time we have left–if that.”

The newspaper says you can really see the difference from an airplane. What used to look like vast stretches of green lace–the wetlands–have now been swallowed up by the sea. “The water now pushes against the city’s boundaries and spreads unbroken to the southern horizon.”

Readers from outside New Orleans may follow the three-day series at nola.com.

The implications for the demise of the hundred miles of wetlands between us and the Gulf are major. As the seawater arrives and displaces the soil, whatever civilization was there disappears. Old maps of this region are filled with the names of communities that no longer exist. What used to be marsh-islands is now open water. Fishermen now drive their boats over places which their maps identify as solid land. Bird Island. Manila Village. They are no more.

Communities such as Cocodrie and Montegut will be the next to go, we’re told.

Furthermore, New Orleans has always counted on that hundred miles of land between it and the Gulf as a barrier against hurricanes. Everyone knows that these storms build up over the sea and weaken over land. Now, the implications for the Crescent City are scary. Our protective shield is disappearing.

Ten years to do something about it, or forget it. That’s what we’re being told.

I worshiped Sunday morning with one of our two Lower Ninth Ward Southern Baptist churches. Free Mission Baptist Church now meets in our associational Baptist building Sunday mornings at 9 o’clock. Johnny Jones, retired school principal and first-class gentleman, pastors the small congregation. Before Katrina, they ran about a hundred; today, they might have had 25. And since no rebuilding is occurring in the Lower Ninth Ward, they’re going to look somewhere else to plant a church.

Their prayer list names the locations of members whom they’re lifting to the Father as Houston, Texas, and other cities around this part of America. We will appreciate your prayers for this pastor, his wife, and the congregation.

My grandchildren ran track Saturday. Neil reported that his 12-year-old Grant ran the 400 meters for the first time. “He had never even run it in practice. But at the last minute, the coach put him in it.”

Neil called Grant off to the side and spoke to him about pacing himself. “It’s a long way around this track,” he said. “So start off at about half speed. Then, halfway around, get up to three-quarter speed. When you get to the last quarter, give it all you’ve got.”

Makes a lot of sense, of course. Unless you’ve never tried it.

Neil smiled in reporting this to me Sunday and said, “He started out fast. Pretty soon he was 20 meters ahead of everyone else in the field. He was really getting after it. But three-quarters of the way around, he ran out of gas and struggled to complete the lap. He ended up third.”

The coaches all gathered around hugging him, telling him what a great job he had done, though.

Good lesson learned. Pace yourself.

We in this city have a huge job to do, a task never before attempted in the history of this nation: the rebuilding of a city this size. So, we’ll need to pace ourselves. To work hard, then knock off and go home. To take a vacation when we can and get away, then come back and work.

We’ll be needing our friends from places like Buford, Georgia, and Jasper, Alabama, and California, Missouri, to keep coming our way for a long time to come. We don’t need them to try to do everything; only what they can.

In time, the city will be rebuilt, and God will do a new thing in New Orleans.

Let’s believe that. And let us “run with patience the race set before us.” (That’s Hebrews 12:1.)