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RSSFinding the Rock
by The Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton
8/21/2005
Upon this rock I will build my church... -- Matthew 16
The punishing Indian heat has been broken, for a moment, by the coming of heavy rains. But with the welcome relief has come other danger: terrible flooding and landslides in the state of Mahashtra that has killed at least 1,000 people and destroyed at least 10,000 homes. Besides the known dead, more than 20 million people have been affected in some way -- injured, homeless, orphaned, hungry, sickened, bankrupted. For many, many people, all of these devastations have piled on at once.
In an instant, everything is changed. Nothing is as it was. The school is gone, and the health clinic. Your house is gone, and everything that was in it. The roads in and out of what was your village are impassable.
When everything has changed in an instant, stability seems an unattainable dream. But there is one thing does not change: the clear charge of Jesus to the faithful. Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. When you have cared for the poor and the sick and the wretched, it is I myself that you have served. Whatever changes the world endures, the Church's instructions are clear, and it swings into action immediately. Action by Churches Together International is the on-the-ground partner with whom Episcopal Relief and Development is working in the aftermath of the floods, providing cooked meals and dry rations, clean drinking water, clothing and blankets, hygiene kits.
Life is uncertain for everyone; when disaster strikes anywhere in the world, all of us remember that this is true. All human beings are vulnerable creatures, but those who are already very poor are vulnerable in more ways than we are -- the foundation of their lives is shifting sand. If there is to be a rock upon which they can rebuild, a place where they can come to rest that is more dependable than what they have now, it cannot come from them -- they have been stripped of what little permanence they had. Someone else must help them regain their footing.
ERD's work in India is work on our behalf, service offered in our name and supported by our money. So it can be no better than we are ourselves, and we can claim its blessing as our own: it is our blessing to be able to help those in need find their footing, no matter where they are.
