Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Praying for Ike?

I'm in a prayer quandary.

I leave on Sunday afternoon to fly to Tucson for part one of my Spiritual Director Training. I've been looking forward to this for months and the classes all look excellent. For a detailed class list click here.

However Hurricane Ike is coming and could potentially delay my flights.
Part of me wants to pray that Ike will miss Houston and hit far enough away so that my plans don't get delayed.

I can't do that.

I know that wherever Ike hits there is going to be damage, so I can't pray that God will protect me and my plans by sending the damage to some other part of the State. Their will probably be people praying there too. Why should God heed my prayer more than theirs? About all I can pray for is that Ike either dissipates or makes landfall at the place that causes the least damage to persons and property. What I really need is a totally barren coastline and inland area that I can prayerfully direct Ike towards!

Apparently on KSBJ the local Christian Radio station this morning, the DJ was asking listeners to pray that Hurricane Ike would head to Mexico (I did not personally hear this, though one of my work colleagues did).

It saddens me that a Christian DJ would make that statement on air. Surely Mexico doesn't want a Hurricane any more than we do!

It reminded me of this video from the Onion.



Hurricane Bound For Texas Slowed By Large Land Mass To The South

4 comments:

Metro Thought said...

I also heard that James Dobson or another similarly-minded evangelical Christian exhorted his flock to pray for rain during Barack Obama's acceptance speech in Denver.

I do not think that prayer could change the course of a storm/typhoon/tornado/tsunami; such ability would imply that God simply ignored the prayers of Indonesians and New Orleans residents (I have no doubt that people prayed prior to the Indonesian tsunami & Hurricane Katrina). Personally, I do not believe that divine intervention ever occurs within the natural world.

I *do* hope that there will be few (if any) human casualties when and where the storm comes ashore!

Anonymous said...

The faster it makes landfall, the less threatening the water portion (the more life threatening) of the hurricane is, and the sooner it passes.

I think it very unlikely that Sunday afternoon flights in Houston will be affected.

hzoig

choral_composer said...

thanks for the info.

My experiences of Hurricanes are very limited!

maria said...

Thanks for this great post, a good reminder to me to be aware of how I pray. And I hope you get where you're going!