A Community Will Triumph

Offices, homes, memories, and now a young man have been taken away from us by an angry river.  Yet the rain pounds on our rooftops and driveways still.  We fear its sound on our rooftops and its sight in the roads. 

Some want to believe God caused this outlashing of nasty weather and who got flooded and who did not.  But I believe otherwise.  I do not believe God controls the weather or how much water accumulates in my basement.  YET, I see God's mighty spirit everywhere.  And WE are the ones who are the hands of feet of this spirit...

I see it in the eyes of those refusing to be called flood victims.  Instead, they prefer "flood survivor." 
I smell it in the meals cooked at shelters or in the homes of volunteers for those displaced or hurt by the flood.
I feel it in the embrace of a flood survivor and a volunteer who are no longer strangers.
I touch it in the unending piles of clothing I rummage through that people have donated to put clothing on the back of another.
I sensed it in the saturated phone lines the day of the flood when everyone was texting and calling their loved ones to see if they were OK.
In the arms, eyes, and endless hours of work of our emergency personnel, volunteers, and community leaders, I see one human sorely mournful for what another has lost.  We are one.  And we cannot deny that. 
The flood of 2011 has left a community hurting and changed.  Yet I have hope and I pray you have it too.   As someone born, raised, and proud to live here, I will not surrender to even an angry, out of control river. 
River, you may take away our belongings, but you will not take away our pride, our commitment to one another, or our ability to overcome.  You will never take away the helping hand of my arm to my neighbor's.  This community floats.  We do not sink.  And we will get through this because we allow God's spirit of generosity, service, kindness, and hope to surface above anything.  From one greater Binghamton native and resident to another:  Do not lose hope.  Allow yourself to heal and be helped.  Take that outstretched hand of a neighbor and may you cling to one another and the known certainty that tomorrow the sun will rise and that a community will triumph.
Peace,
Pastor Annette Snedaker