Houston: "Priest Gasps for Words As Storm Victims Question Their Pain."

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see star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article171167747.html

This article begins with this priest walking by mounds of trash that had been people’s belongings, ruined by the flood there.

“It’s a mirror of what many who pray alongside this priest are struggling with at home, and he draws them close in a circle, heads bowed and hands clasped. He tells them they worship a God of miracles, that they won’t be crushed by their losses, that as mysterious and unwanted as it may be, this trial is a gift that reminds them what exactly they hold true.”

“Now is the time,” he tells them, “for us to stand on our faith.”

“People are sad, people are uncertain,” 38-year-old Bergeron said. “And what we try to do is to bring people hope.”
 
Now it makes sense. One word is incorrect in the thread title. It should be Priest
Grasps for Words - not Gasps! I wondered what made the priest gasp?
 
I was moved by this line of the article:

“Some who have come to Goring in the days since Hurricane Harvey hit ask what kind of god would allow such suffering. It’s a question for which he has no answer”

It must be so difficult to address this age old question people have in times of trouble.

This Priest sounds like a beacon of light in this situation and may God bless him and those he is assisting. May they not lose faith and hope during these difficult times.

Mary.
 
MaryT777 said:
I was moved by this line of the article:

“Some who have come to Goring in the days since Hurricane Harvey hit ask what kind of god would allow such suffering. It’s a question for which he has no answer”

It must be so difficult to address this age old question people have in times of trouble.

This Priest sounds like a beacon of light in this situation and may God bless him and those he is assisting. May they not lose faith and hope during these difficult times.

Mary.
Click to expand...
AMEN!
 
God is there giving hope. People are living on flood plains, FLOOD plains, and they think God is supposed to keep them protected? It may be me, but it sounds very arrogant to put yourself in harms way then complain when nature takes its course and you end up in trouble.
I’m not saying the people living there where deliberately defying God (the city was built long before snyone understood the nature of the area!), but they need to accept that it was always a possibility

God gives you hope that things will get better. That worldly possessions are not as important as your life. Maybe it’s an opportunity to refocus on whats most important. There are lots of things positive to be said! From the article, it seems like the priest gets it!
 
Crusaderbear said:
God is there giving hope. People are living on flood plains, FLOOD plains, and they think God is supposed to keep them protected? It may be me, but it sounds very arrogant to put yourself in harms way then complain when nature takes its course and you end up in trouble.
I’m not saying the people living there where deliberately defying God (the city was built long before snyone understood the nature of the area!), but they need to accept that it was always a possibility

God gives you hope that things will get better. That worldly possessions are not as important as your life. Maybe it’s an opportunity to refocus on whats most important. There are lots of things positive to be said!
Click to expand...
Apparently, no one has done any serious infrastructure improvement work since the 1940’s.

Population has increased six fold since then.
 
MaryT777 said:
I was moved by this line of the article:

“Some who have come to Goring in the days since Hurricane Harvey hit ask what kind of god would allow such suffering. It’s a question for which he has no answer”

It must be so difficult to address this age old question people have in times of trouble.

This Priest sounds like a beacon of light in this situation and may God bless him and those he is assisting. May they not lose faith and hope during these difficult times.
Click to expand...
Amen.
 
Crusaderbear said:
God is there giving hope. People are living on flood plains, FLOOD plains, and they think God is supposed to keep them protected? It may be me, but it sounds very arrogant to put yourself in harms way then complain when nature takes its course and you end up in trouble.
I’m not saying the people living there where deliberately defying God (the city was built long before snyone understood the nature of the area!), but they need to accept that it was always a possibility
Click to expand...
Agree. I’m continuously baffled by why people continue to live in areas where there is a serious risk of flood, hurricanes etc. but if they choose to do so then they are accepting a risk that this can happen at any time. I feel the same way about people who live in areas that are prone to tornadoes, especially if they do not have a storm cellar, and along the fault lines of earthquakes.

I realize not everybody has the economic wherewithal to choose where they will live, but there are always plenty of affected people who did have that choice and took the risk.

Having said that, disaster can really strike any of us at any time, no matter how we try to prevent it. We could have a house fire or even have the house get struck by lightning. As a child it was my greatest fear that our house would be struck by lightning and burn down as I saw it happen on “Lassie”. As I grew older I told myself that was because the cabin in Lassie was the only one out on some hillside and that such things did not happen in dense suburbs. Then as an adult I lived in a dense suburb and was woken up one day from an afternoon nap by the extremely loud sound of lightning hitting the roof of the house across the street and setting it on fire. It was not the tallest structure on the block or isolated or anything, it was just a totally random lightning strike. Fortunately the family who lived there wasn’t home and the firemen put it out quickly but there was still significant damage.
 
mdgspencer said:
see star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article171167747.html

This article begins with this priest walking by mounds of trash that had been people’s belongings, ruined by the flood there.

“It’s a mirror of what many who pray alongside this priest are struggling with at home, and he draws them close in a circle, heads bowed and hands clasped. He tells them they worship a God of miracles, that they won’t be crushed by their losses, that as mysterious and unwanted as it may be, this trial is a gift that reminds them what exactly they hold true.”

“Now is the time,” he tells them, “for us to stand on our faith.”

“People are sad, people are uncertain,” 38-year-old Bergeron said. “And what we try to do is to bring people hope.”
Click to expand...
I think CS Lewis said something along the lines of there being two types of faith.
  1. God will save me from catastrophe.
  2. God will be there with me when there’s a catastrophe
Lewis felt the latter was REAL (pure) trust in God.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Agree. I’m continuously baffled by why people continue to live in areas where there is a serious risk of flood, hurricanes etc. but if they choose to do so then they are accepting a risk that this can happen at any time. I feel the same way about people who live in areas that are prone to tornadoes, especially if they do not have a storm cellar, and along the fault lines of earthquakes.

I realize not everybody has the economic wherewithal to choose where they will live, but there are always plenty of affected people who did have that choice and took the risk.

Having said that, disaster can really strike any of us at any time, no matter how we try to prevent it. We could have a house fire or even have the house get struck by lightning. As a child it was my greatest fear that our house would be struck by lightning and burn down as I saw it happen on “Lassie”. As I grew older I told myself that was because the cabin in Lassie was the only one out on some hillside and that such things did not happen in dense suburbs. Then as an adult I lived in a dense suburb and was woken up one day from an afternoon nap by the extremely loud sound of lightning hitting the roof of the house across the street and setting it on fire. It was not the tallest structure on the block or isolated or anything, it was just a totally random lightning strike. Fortunately the family who lived there wasn’t home and the firemen put it out quickly but there was still significant damage.
Click to expand...
Being properly prepared is one thing. Holding people responsible for simply living in an area that has a chance of a natural disaster is another. If people refused to live in areas that had a chance of a tornado, hurricane, volcanic eruption, earthquake, etc, the US population would be constricted to the rocky soil of New England. It is a bit unfair to thumb your nose and say, “shouldn’t have lived in the path of a hurricane while living on a flood plane!” People have to live somewhere, and there are legitimate reasons Houston was built where it was.
 
There is legitimate frustration from people who don’t live in these areas but have to foot the bill for these natural disasters. If the insurance companies cannot survive these disasters then the premiums they charge are not high enough, but instead they chose to gamble.

There is a lack of warning given to people who live or move to these areas. Local officials always act as if they had no idea such a disaster could happen. Nothing could be further from the truth, yet there are no warnings given to people, and no useful precautions are taken by them for a catastrophe.
 
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