Not Our Home

UPDATE:  If you want to know how to help go HERE.  The Benfield's have put together a great listing of places around NWA that are helping with the disaster relief.

Is it just me, or do you also feel like we're characters in the movie 2012?  Seriously, I don't ever remember so many natural disasters ever occurring in one year in my meager 23 years of living on this earth.

Being a science teacher, I could go into the details of why we have had the craziest Spring, but those facts do very little to place patches on the hurting hearts of the multitudes of people who have been affected by these catastrophes.

When the Earthquakes and Tsunami hit Japan.  We prayed for Japan.  We viewed pictures, watched new stories, and hear eye witness accounts of the horrible aftermath of the destruction.  But it was still far away.  After all, it was in Japan.  Tsunamis don't happen often in America.  They most certainly do not happen in Arkansas.

But tornadoes do.

When the tornadoes hit Alabama, it was as though we were shaken to our very core.  This was America.  Our home.  A piece of "The American Dream" that now looks like a third world country.

A part of our precious SEC was now in ruins.  Churches, Civic Organizations, and Non-Profit Groups rushed to lend their helping hand.  We donated money, items, and our time.

Most importantly, we prayed.

And now, it has hit in our own backyard.  Joplin, MO.  Only a short drive from our home.  Once again, a place thrown into the path of nature's fury as families were racing home from commencement ceremonies.

 Graduation, a time to celebrate and reminisce.  Yet these high schoolers have been robbed of these celebrations as they are left to pick up the pieces of their homes, look for their loved ones, and pray.

As we as a nation are left to question why, and ponder how these families will ever rebuild their lives.  We rest in the security that He gives knowing that "we may weep for a night, but JOY will come in the morning".  Nothing is ever left out of God's will.  Although the devil may scheme, plan, and plot to rob us of our joy in life, we know something the devil will never understand.  For our joy does not come in material possessions, or even relationships obtained in this lifetime.  Our joy comes from knowing our Heavenly Father intimately and knowing that this earth, is not our home.