When Governor Christie went on television and said “don’t be stupid, get out” I laughed out loud. I have often thought the same thing whenever they put evacuation orders in places for storms, etc and people defy the wisdom and dig their heels in and say “I’m staying, you can’t make me leave”. It always makes me kinda mad because I know that these stubborn people are going to be the first to cry out for help when the very thing they were warned to get away from happens and then other people have to put their lives in danger to compensate for these people’s misjudgement.
And while I still feel that way about people who refuse to evacuate because they want to protect their “stuff” and will risk their lives and others to do so the thought occurred to me that sometimes people don’t leave because they can’t. I have never been to New York City but I know that 5 million people ride the mass transit system every day from what I heard on the news and I know that taxi’s and public transportation are the norm there and that many people don’t have cars. So when someone says you need to leave, it’s not a matter of loading up their priceless possessions and pets into a car and leaving. For a lot of people, most I would hazard to guess it’s not that simple. When I was struggling with my finances a few months ago, had a natural disaster of the magnitude of Hurricane Sandy been headed my way I wouldn’t have had to worry because I have family to go to. But say I didn’t have family or friends that were able or close enough to take me in. What then? I wouldn’t have been able to afford a motel room for even one night, let alone several. I wouldn’t have had the money to rent a car (if I didn’t have one) or pay to fly somewhere to escape the upcoming disaster. I wouldn’t have had the money to eat out for days on end while I had to be out of my home. And I wouldn’t have had the heart to leave Quincy behind so that would have thrown a whole other glitch into the plan. So I think today about the poor, not stupid people, of NY and the other affected states and I feel really bad for them. I bet there are a whole lot of people, holed up and making the best of it because they had no place to go. I bet there are a whole lot of families who live paycheck to paycheck and simply survive on a regular day that can’t possibly afford to just head out to safety.
A cartoon that I saw on facebook showed Governor Romney making an announcement saying, “you need to evacuate to your second or third home because this storm is gonna be big”. It was funny but then I really started thinking about it. For most, the home they have is the only home they have and the only home they will ever have and for them, its not a matter of losing “one of their homes” but losing everything. Puts into perspective somehow the whole have and have nots element of our society. Not to say there is anything wrong with having more than one home, having money, having an abundance. But there is something very wrong with a society where so many people turn a blind eye to those who are in need, choosing instead to focus on their own concerns and adopting the attitude of “let someone else take care of them”.
I went to Church on Sunday in Kingfisher with my sister and family. The sermon was called Live, Pray and Serve, a take on the Live, Laugh, Love phrase so popular now. It occurred to me that the last word is actually interchangeable, because doesn’t to love mean to serve and doesn’t to serve mean to love? I think so. If you are serving, in whatever capacity you are negating the let someone else do it frame of mind and you actively love another person in the manner of caring about someone else’s welfare besides your own. In talking about giving to our fellow man, the preacher said that she is often asked what to do in the case of a beggar on the street corner, something we see more and more of every day. And her response was to quote C.S. Lewis and though I didn’t write down the exact quote the jist of if was something about rather be on my death bed and be called a sucker for being duped by a beggar that really wasn’t needy than to know I had not lent a hand to a legitimate need. Sometimes its hard to distinguish and there are scammers everywhere. But I’ve often thought, what if that person I just walked by that looked like they needed help was actually Jesus in disguise checking the status of my heart. Kinda like that song what if God was one of us by Alanis Morrisette.
Watching and reading some of the coverage of the storm today I got pretty aggravated at some of the comments. As expected, many people sought to politicize even this. Whether the Democrats or the Republicans are responsible for the storm is still up for debate. One comment about God using natural disasters to cleanse the “city” of the degenerates really got my ire up. Oh really? You must serve a different God. And then every once in a while a touch of humanity would be reported. A stranger helping a stranger. The touching site of the soldiers standing watch over the tomb of the unknown soldier, the firefighters who stood in waist deep water trying to put out an apartment fire, the crews from all over the nation going to the area to help in the effort to get power lines back up and things back to normal.
One thing that really resonates when you look at the devastation. From pricey beach homes to ramshackle apartment buildings, from million dollar casinos to mom and pop businesses, the storm did not discriminate. For the moment anyway, it didn’t matter who had what or how much of it. Monster storms don’t discriminate. Cancer doesn’t discriminate. Eventually we all end up in the same place. And like C.S. Lewis, I want to look back and not count my worth by the things I had but by the people I cared for.
For now all I can do is send “thoughts and prayers” to the people devastated by this storm. What I can do though it make a valid and conscious effort to help people that I encounter in my own backyard. It’s time to find a cause and lend a hand. Not sure where that will lead me. But the time I have been blessed with needs to be shared. Gonna put some thought into that and figure out where I want to serve
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