A Lament for Texas

Speak to a Texan about “camp life” and almost all of them become nostalgic for the hundreds or more summer camps around the state where boys and girls enjoy the outdoors. I have been told that camp life is part of the fabric of Texas culture.

And thus, last week when Camp Mystic was swept away by a torrent of flood waters, in one sense the lifeblood of Texas was swept away also. Parents who had left their children in the pristine safety of camp were awakened to their children gone forever. The tragedy is unspeakable in depth and breadth.

I know something of sudden grief, and I also know that each person’s grief is painfully and intimately personal to them. Today we grieve for and with Texas. We mourn the lives of more than 100 people cut short by what is deemed “an act of God.”

We lament this tragedy because while we call these “natural disasters” there is nothing natural about them. They fracture people’s lives without care for whether someone is rich or poor, a person of color or white, young or old, Republican, Democrat or everyone else. Some of us may want to make natural disasters political/partisan issues, but we must not. Not now, not in the midst of so much sorrow.

In my lament for the people in Texas, I ask God that they would know His nearness, that He is not absent from them in the midst of unspeakable loss and pain. Nicholas Wolterstorff, whose son died suddenly, said this about God as Wolterstorff processed his own grief:

“God is not only the God of the sufferers but the God who suffers. ... It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live. I always thought this meant that no one could see his splendor and live. A friend said perhaps it meant that no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is splendor. ... Instead of explaining our suffering God shares it.”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

A Prayer of Lament

If you are a person of faith and would like to, please pray this prayer that I scribbled on a notepad this week:

Blessed are you who mourn, may you be comforted in your grief by the Almighty God

Blessed are you who cry out for mercy, may you encounter God’s rich mercy

Blessed are you whose hope is gone, may you, in time, discover hope anew

Blessed are you who feel in the dark, may you see glimpses of light breaking into the darkness

Blessed are you when the pain of loss and grief is overwhelming to you, may you be upheld by community whose love will not fade.

AND

“The Lord bless you and keep you

May the Lord cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you

The Lord turned toward you and give you His peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)

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A Postscript for Our Divided Times

Times of such tragedy must not be about partisan and political pandering. In January in the midst of the horrific fires in California, the President of the United States made inappropriate comments about the Governor of California and about releasing water from a dam. Mr. Trump was wrong, dead wrong in making those comments., especially because he is the President and one crucial role of the office is to be the “griever in chief.”

Likewise, this week a variety of people have criticized Texas Governor Abbot and the Texas legislature for these floods. While we all would like to cast blame on others, this is absolutely not the time or place to do so. I would call on those in the political realm and the media to not look for a scapegoat.

Now is the time to mourn. Nothing more, nothing less.