Home, Sweet Home!

Thanks for your prayers, everyone.

We drove home from Texarkana this morning, and arrived about 5:00 pm. Parts of the West Bank lack power, and a lot of stores are closed, e.g. Lowes, while others are open, e.g. Home Depot - where I had to buy a wrench to turn our gas back on. But our neighborhood, "Old Gretna", has very little damage - a few toppled fences and mussed up trees. Folks are drib-drabbing back home and are thankful to find their homes largely as they left them.

Leo has been "crashed" since before we got home, and boy, won't he be surprised to wake up on his own couch! He was a real trooper throughout our sojourn - though all the talk of collapsing levees had him upset a few times out of the blue during our travels. It goes to show that toddlers are always listening. I want to take him to the levee tomorrow to show him that "the water at the levee is [not] big" and indeed, there is nothing to worry about.

While giving thanks to God for sparing us, and while unloading the carrier on top of the van, the St. Joseph's Church carillon began to ring out ancient hymns of the Church - which is exactly what was was going on when I was loading the carrier Saturday morning before our departure. There is something profound about that, maybe something like the line from one of those ancient hymns of the Church: "Holy God, We Praise Thy name" (LSB 940), stanza 3:
"And from morn to set of sun / Through the Church the song goes on."

We Christians have been singing this hymn (which is actually a versification of the Te Deum Laudamus) since the 4th century - through heresies and schisms, through wars and pestilence, through suffering and death, through politics and revolutions, through the collapse of empires and the rise of nations, through reformations and counter-reformations, and yes, even through departing and returning from hurricane evacuations.

What a joy that the Church - built on the bedrock of Christ the Cornerstone and founded upon the rock of St. Peter's apostolic ministry and confession - remains constant century after century as every generation prays the Lord to protect us "from lightning and tempest; from all calamity by fire and water; and from everlasting death."

Thanks be to God for His mercy in permitting 2 million people to flee the storm and for bequeathing His Church with the traditional liturgy and hymnody to bring them comfort in such times.

We continue to pray for those whose homes have been damaged, those who have suffered injury, as well as for those who are yet to be affected by inclement weather yet to come this hurricane season. We have already made motel reservations in case Hurricane Ike shows up in the Gulf.