The cross in the storm

It came in the dark of night, its cruel winds forcing people across six states to scramble to basements and bathrooms and to pray for a miracle. This record-long tornado’s wrath left a devastating path of destruction in Arkansas, Illinois, Tennessee, Mississippi, Missouri, and Kentucky. After four hours of horror, it was Kentucky that bore the brunt of the damage, with towns like Mayfield, Bowling Green, and Dawson Springs left virtually unrecognizable. More than 70 people are dead in Kentucky alone, including several children. Many remain missing.

Tornadoes are a uniquely horrible natural disaster. Unlike hurricanes, there is no way to board up or prepare a house and there is little time between warning and when the funnel cloud descends on your neighborhood. All you can do is huddle and hope. Some, including several in a candle factory in Mayfield, didn’t make it out alive. Many others emerged from hiding, only to see all their possessions in a tangled, twisted mess. One resident of Dawson Springs writes:

Tornadoes rip open windows into peoples’ lives, laying them bare for the world to see. You see clothes, dishes, toys and medicine bottles, and you wonder if the people who lost them have the resources to replace them. Intellectually, you know you are standing in what used to be someone's driveway or front yard, but the landscape looks so different that your mind questions whether you are really in the same place.

One pastor not only knows he’s in the same place, but is providing leadership to his devastated community. Wes Fowler, the pastor of First Baptist Church Mayfield, emerged from the basement of the congregation’s building to see a church battered, but not destroyed, the cross in the education building standing silhouetted against a blown out back wall. The people gathered on Sunday in their damaged sanctuary, offering thanks to God, praying for their town and the families who’ve lost loved ones, and clinging to a faith that God will see them through the storm. The image of this congregation gathered amid the tumult around them is a metaphor for the church’s calling: The church is the pillar and buttress of truth that stands amid the war-torn vestiges of this earth with a message of eternal hope. That a church can gather and proclaim its God’s gospel amidst wreckage is but one small way of showing the church’s divine sanction.

Fowler knows the days ahead will be tough, but he knows Mayfield will be met by an outpouring of generosity and kindness from across the country, including his own Southern Baptist denomination, which was already on the ground with food and temporary shelter and crews made up of ordinary lay Southern Baptists, donning yellow shirts and hard hats and ready to lift their fellow Americans out of despair. Christian relief workers will come and will stay, long after the headlines have moved on and the nation’s attention is gripped by the next new thing.

The Christian faith has a word for these moments. It’s a robust gospel that acknowledges the reality of a broken world and hears the lament of those who suffer. It offers a deep and abiding confidence in the goodness and sovereignty of a Savior who is not detached from our grief and removed from our losses, but weeps with us in our distress. Pastors like Wes Fowler will preach to a beleaguered community both about a Good Shepherd who walks us through the valley of the shadow of death and about a conquering King, who will one day return to make all things in a groaning creation right again.

The cross that stands still while the rest of Mayfield is shattered is a symbol of the way God looks at our suffering and for the church’s mission in society. Those who suffer loss can find rest in a God who bore the death of his own Son at the hands of a cruel and unjust world. The church’s building may be damaged, but its gospel cannot be. Those who grieve a life disrupted by the storm can find peace in the God of the storm. And Christians who come to Mayfield can embody what it means to live out the Christian gospel, one act of rebuilding at a time.