devastating weather

yesterday, as i stopped in the office of the neighborhood elementary school where i help out in a classroom, i had a brief chat to the chief organizer of volunteers.  he is a gentle african american man in his sixties that, in his retirement, gives over most of his free time to serve this underprivileged school. 

since we've had days of rain, we could both acknowledge a collective sigh of relief around the place.  but we went on to talk about the water crisis in atlanta where my parents live and the drought that has devastated the area.  then he told me his wife has two sisters - one is just outside new orleans and as of yesterday they had 4 feet of water floating around them while her other sister evacuated her home near san diego due to fire.  come on. 

we agreed that the content of this week's weather could have easily been featured 20 years ago in a science fiction novel about the destruction of the environment as we know it.  now i don't believe in the rubbish end-0f-times theology coming out of a series of poorly written books in the u.s., but i do think it must be unavoidable this week to sit back and deny that things aren't going so well and we are largely responsible.  going back to the first chapters of genesis, before god offered a plan and a people to save the world, god gave humanity its first mission - multiply, fill the earth and care for creation (the right understanding of dominion as stewardship over something that isn't ours in the first place).  from the beginning, this was entrusted to us.  i shudder to think of the mess we're in now and i struggle to find hope during a week like this one.