life in the suture zone...

In the earthquake faults between tectonic plates, the suture zone is the in between place where they meet. I find in that a metaphor for the times in which we live... and invite your conversation in the suture zone.

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Location: Bakersfield, CA, United States

... a struggling, but mostly joyful, apprentice of Jesus.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

a ray of hope...

My wife spoke with her brother in Southern California last night. We’ve been following the story in New Orleans carefully, since our sister-in-law’s sister and family live just south of Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans. Though the water came up only to their porch, and they had decided to stick it out, advice has been to relocate. In fact, their church had raised enough money for four plane tickets, one for the mom and one each for her three daughters. (Dad is staying unless forced to leave, and I’m not sure mandatory evacuation applies to them where they live.)

Two of the daughters were sent by plane to a friend’s place in Texas. But mom and daughter number three stayed at home. This daughter is medically fragile and is tube-fed. By the time they realized that it would be wise for the two of them to use the plane tickets, the airlines would only allow one of them to go. Obviously, mom wasn’t going to go off and leave her daughter, nor send her by herself on the plane. So it was back home for the both of them.

All of that background to get to the real story.

The handicapped daughter had attended special education classes in her local school system and was transported there by a man who owned his own special education transportation bus. Evidently the district would contract with the man to provide these services to remotely located students.

Anyway, sometime after arriving home from the dilemma at the airport, they saw him driving his school bus around the neighborhood. The hurricane actually destroyed his house completely. All he escaped with were the clothes on his back and his small yellow school bus. He noticed that they were still there and stopped to check on them. When he heard of their dilemma, he came up with his own solution: he would drive them halfway to their friends’ home in Texas if the friend would drive the other half and pick them up. He did. They met in the middle of the journey, made the trip the rest of the way with friends, and I assume he made it back to his home, or what was left of it. (Please also note the irony that he still has his school bus, but no pupils to transfer and no school to take them to. That all equals no job or paycheck either.)

All he had were the clothes on his back and his small yellow school bus. But he didn’t grasp them to himself as his only assets. He used them in service to someone in need.

If that’s not kingdom living, I don’t know what is. It certainly puts me to shame.

Anyway, just thought I would share this.

Grace and peace,

Owen

1 Comments:

Blogger Tony said...

It's good to see that maybe there are a few antibodies at work under the scab.

Tones

4:32 PM  

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