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Hope After the Storm  

As she peered out the hospital window, angry skies warned Dory it was time to leave her husband with the doctors and head home.  Not easily done. He’d had a heart attack five days earlier.

Climbing into her four-door Chevy, she cruised down to the ferry that would float her across the lake from Mountain Home to Gamaliel—hopefully before the worst of the Arkansas storm hit. At about 6:30, she turned into her driveway, hurried inside and changed into her nightgown, and then put a piece of meat in the frying pan and set it on the stove. 

At 6:55pm, Dory’s watch stopped.  That’s when the tornado exploded her home, lifting her above 50-foot trees, ultimately tossing her body a thousand feet into the forest across the street. 

Concerned neighbors formed a search party, tromping through the woods, calling out Dory’s name.  Finally hearing a whimper, they placed her crumpled body on a bi-fold closet door, eventually getting her to the hospital.  The attending physician—the same doctor who had cared for her husband—announced that despite his team’s best efforts, Dory’s internal injuries were too many to overcome.  She was not yet 60. 

This all happened 50 years ago this week, back when my parents had six little kids to worry about.  Having just returned from Arkansas visiting his father in the hospital, my dad immediately returned—now for his mom’s funeral and to clean up the property.

“Clothes were scattered throughout the forest, their car buried under the rubble of what was a fireplace. One of mother’s quilts was found across the lake in a tree,” Dad recalls.

“Their refrigerator was blown nearly 200 feet across the road into a gulley where it sat upright.  One hinge was broken, but inside there was an egg carton with one fresh egg—unbroken.”  

Knowing that a shocking loss like this has soured many a man’s faith, I asked my dad how this devastation impacted his beliefs.  His reply: “Turning from God never entered my mind.  Mom was a strong Christian.  I knew I'd see her again. Was I sad?   You bet. Was I bitter? Not at all.  I felt sorry for my dad, of course. My attitudes and feelings were based on my faith in what the Bible says and who wrote it.”

Fifty years later, it’s difficult to think how hard it was for my dad and his dad.   In one storm, my grandfather lost his wife, and my dad lost his Mom. Hard to process.

Truth is, we live in a world where cancer often overcomes…where bullets kill …where car crashes turn deadly…where tornadoes blow up houses.  Yet as long as we have Christ, we have hope itself.  And not a flimsy, fuzzy vague religious notion, either. Hebrews 6:19 spells it out:

“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” 

That anchor, of course, is Jesus and His promise of eternal life for all those who know Him.

For now, we hurt.

Yet now, we have hope.

A hope that no tornado can ever blow away.

 

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Jon GaugerJon Gauger

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