How strange this is!  I have just realized that last Friday was April 4, 2008.  It was the day five or so tornadoes ripped through the Jackson Metropolitan area tearing up houses, neighborhoods, power lines, businesses, schools, churches, etc.  It all happened quickly after the  day had begun warm and pleasant.  I had been out mowing grass but had taken my lawn mower to Sears because the handle sheared off at the base.  I've never had that happen to me before.  Friday was a weird day from the beginning.  It felt that way.  Then when I was in the bank about noon, the rain and wind literally swooshed in.  That's all I saw and heard.  I never heard the disaster sirens go off.  I didn't think about tornadoes until Friday evening when my wife attempted to go to her second job out at Blockbuster on Old Canton Road and could not get through because of trees and power lines  down, power outages, and other devastation.

Now, what is really weird about this is that exactly 34 years ago Friday, April 4, 1974, we were living in Louisville, Ky., at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary when the famous cell of tornadoes ripped through Louisville, leaving East Louisville devastated for about two weeks.  The seminary campus was severely damaged, and we didn't really get back to full operation for weeks.  We didn't have power for 10 days to two weeks.  That was a defining moment for us.  The day was warm and pleasant.  We had been out walking to the business district in St. Matthews, an Eastern Louisville suburb, and had returned home when we heard a sound like a freight train coming through the back yard or a 747 warming up  across the way near Norton Hall.  We realized in time that it was a tornado and plunged down the steps into the basement where we took cover for about ten minutes.  When we emerged, the whole landscape had been altered.  Trees were down; slate tiles were off the roof of the seminary chapel next door.  Power was out; cars were smashed; buildings were badly damaged; and the rest is more of the same.

The 1974 storms in Louisville brought out the best in our seminary community as well as in East Louisville.  People helped, gave, assisted, prayed, and got involved in the community.  The same thing is happening here in Jackson 34 years later.  People are helping, giving, assisting, praying, and getting involved in the community.  Why is it, I wonder, that it takes something like this to unite us?  Why not the Gospel of Jesus Christ itself?  Why can it not unite us rather than divide us by differences over doctrine or application of doctrine?  It is something to think about, isn't it?  Could this be a reason why some people shy away from Christianity, the church, and the gospel?  They tend to divide rather than to unite?  How could that be different, I wonder?