Solution for Disaster

When there are dirty dishes on the counter, it’s surprising how quickly my children remember what everyone else ate.

Accusations fly faster than mashed potatoes from a spoon.

Eventually, the guilty party stops throwing accusations and begins flinging excuses.

It’s rare for someone to confess immediately, and even rarer for someone to voluntarily wash someone else’s dishes. 

No one wants to confess sin, much less repent of it. Hardly anyone likes to think of sin at all. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we left sin out of it?

In the aftermath of the mess of Hurricane Helene, I have been grieved to see a lot of accusations and even more excuses. 

Christians are buying into the conspiracy theories of cloud seeding and meteorological warfare. Believers are blaming the government and shaking their heads over bureaucratic inaction. There are a lot of fingers pointing.

But no one is repenting.

When Amos prophesied to the people, God’s word to them after every disaster was “yet you did not return to me.”

I am not just talking about the people in the southeast hit by the hurricane. I am talking about our whole nation- every Jesus follower in America. Have we returned to Him? Have we repented of our sin, both collectively and individually, and returned to following Jesus?

No. We’re content to blame the government. I’m not excusing our government, and I wholeheartedly agree that it is flawed. However, we should never have been trusting FEMA anyway. Every federal government program is riddled with corruption, excess, and regulation. Our trust should have never been placed there.

We’re content to jump with both feet on conspiracy theories because they fit our narratives or political waves because they seem like a quick fix. One has more holes than swiss cheese and the other threatens to drown us as election day draws near. Our rationalization should have never landed there.

We blame the people who have been hurt by the disaster. If they would just do this or if they would have just done that. Hurting people should have our compassion, not our hindsight instruction.

And we sit glued to our social media, our network news, or our talking heads like they are prophets who can give us truth about the current state of affairs, both here and abroad. Our trust in them only shows the ability of these outlets to hypnotize us until we are deaf and blind to the Lord’s real call to repentance.

When Nehemiah heard about the disaster of the crumbled wall in Jerusalem, he repented of his own sin and prayed for his people.

When Daniel realized the plight of his people in captivity and the weight of their past sin, he repented and sought God’s will for their future.

When Jesus talked to people of disasters that resulted in loss of life, He told them, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Enough with the accusations, conspiracies, and excuses. Wash your own dishes, and while you’re at it, wash your neighbors’ too. It’s time for this nation’s believers to repent and follow Jesus.