SILVER LININGS

LAW & ORDER

It was Monday night, August 29. Hurricane Katrina had come and gone, but barely. It was, to quote Snoopy, a dark and stormy night. With no power, the church building evacuees were homeless, stunned, and when my two elders and I returned from checking on a few folks who had stayed in their homes, we discovered that they were the least bit scared.

The story I was given before I made it into the building was that there was a man inside who had shot his fiancé in the back and needed someone to pray for him. I, on the other hand, needed to be on another continent. Now I am one who has the capacity for sympathy for an armed man in need of prayer, but this had been a rough day. Everyone there had had a rough day. And there were the children.

So I sat down with my elders and the self-announced gunman to have a little talk. He looked, without my telling you, like it had been a rough day for him, too. Splattered across the roughness, he sported a brand new “I Love OSYG” shirt, with the “love” represented by a heart (and OSYG standing for our very own Ocean Springs Youth Group). He had arrived shirtless and scared, and the least bit desperate, so some nice member gave him the only shirt we had around.

The facts of his story were a little suspect, but if it were true that he woke up to a hurricane storm surge in his bedroom, waded to his girlfriend’s house where the gun accidentally discharged and blasted her in the back, and if it were true that they miraculously made it to a hospital where she was in surgery while he was whisked to a makeshift police station where they decided to let him loose to wander the dark hurricane-ravaged streets based on lack of evidence, then I suspect my facts might have been a little iffy too.

But I did not need him in our building at this specific moment in time. You can condemn my lack of compassion at some later date. I was stressed.

When we made it clear in the nicest possible way that he could not stay there, he mentioned that he would wander back out to where his day had started. Which had spent the day underwater. Eleven miles away. And it was a dark and stormy night.

So I had a better idea. I walked into the dark highway with a flashlight and began waving it like I intended to land a jet on that specific spot of the road. It seemed like a better idea at the time. And it worked. In spite of many other things on their plate at the moment, I caught the attention of a few policemen who came to see what the maniac (read: I) was doing out in the middle of the road.

When I shared our plight, a radio call determined that our formerly-armed friend was telling a story that had some truth to it, at least somewhere in there. The police agreed to take him away, however, to a makeshift shelter where he could spend the night.

Before he left, someone thankfully reminded me to pray for him, the very reason he claimed to have stopped in that night. I don’t know what I said, but it probably included the word “help” in there somewhere. It probably said help several times actually.

I don’t know what happened to the young man or his wounded girlfriend since August 29, but maybe more than us, I’m sure that is a day they will never forget. I do know I won’t forget that night, most specifically the odd feeling that standing in the middle of a highway and waving a flashlight like a madman was the only way I could get some help.

God’s seen me like that before August 29, 2005. Maybe that’s why it came so natural.