Ice Storm 2007 is drawing to a close for most of us here in central Oklahoma and I am pretty pumped about it. My sister, who lives across the street from my house is still out of power, but she is now one of the few, the rest of us are getting back to a normal flow of things.

So for those of you who have been completely under a rock for the last couple of weeks, Oklahoma got hammered with freezing rain that took down tons of trees and power lines, paralyzing the electricity dependent communities. I was without power for five days and there was a lot of work to do cleaning up the limbs from the huge, old trees that graced and shaded our neighborhood.

Although there was inconvenience and worse, some people couldn’t get warm and have died, there has been a beautiful picture of community that I have seen.

The Cox Center downtown has people staying there on cots (fortunately in much better conditions than new Orleans a few years ago), there are tons of different ministries/organizations feeding people, letting them sleep in church gymnasiums and essentially meeting whatever needs arise.

These things seem to always happen in crisis. There are organizations that step up, whose mission and purpose are to help those in crisis. What I saw happen was as exciting. I don’t exactly live in the Hamptons. None of my neighbors are rich. Few have a college education, or a retirement plan that will really take care of them in old age (most of them are older). But I got to see these people offering help to one another. Cutting trees, sharing warmth and food. There were five different families at one point in my yard helping with a tree that had broken limbs all over the place. It seems that with wealth, we disregard our need for community, our need to help and be helped.

We need each other. We were not meant to be alone, and I am thankful for the reminder that we live more fully when we live in community with others.

Grace and peace,

Steven