One year after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, a group from my church went down to New Orleans to help with the city’s recovery. We were hosted by an organization called RHINO – Rebuilding Hope in New Orleans. Our job was to gut a couple of houses – nothing requiring real construction skill or knowledge. We were there to gather up all the flooded, swollen, mildewy remnants of strangers’ lives so that they could save that bit of money and invest it in their future. Even a year later, signs of the devastation were all around. You could still see the spray-painted emergency markings to let first responders know if there were any injured or dead in a building. So many neighborhoods remained unrestored. Being there was overwhelming even though we were doing something tangible to help.
One day, when we were driving around, I noticed a sign in front of a church. It simply said, “Jesus walked on water.” Just think about that for a minute. Here, in this city where so many were devastated, where levees broke and floods ripped away peoples’ lives, their memories, their livelihoods, their sense of what their future would be… Here, this church dared to say that, “Jesus walked on water” and to remind everyone who passed by. No matter the force of destruction, even greater than the fear and uncertainty, was their hope and trust in Jesus. Even before they saw things changing, they trusted that God would see them through. If that isn’t faith, I don’t know what is.